Sneak peak of Franz Josef Glacier!!
After an awesome wet day at Punakaiki yesterday, we decided to stock up some rainproof gear at Greymouth. We bought our gum boots and rainproof pants at Warehouse store in Greymouth, we are ready to hit on the rainy spring weather, bring it ON!!
We stop by the small town of Hokitika, to view the famous NZ Greenstones (Pounamu in Maori) or Jade as we called it in Asia. The West Coast of NZ is abundant with this valuable stone, where the Maoris would use them as gifts, hunting tools and fishing tools. Since it had been raining for few days, we tried our luck in picking greenstones by the Hokitika beach, because after some rain, the stones will be flushed from the rocks in the forest by the river, flowing to the sea of West Coast then subsequently ended up on the beach!
Under the rain, we search and search, for fun really because there are all sorts of funny looking stones! Real good fun, and we ended up taking a small bag of stones, one even resembles the map of OZ! (Sigh, the pictures for Hokitika had mysteriously GONE from our hard drive*** )
After that stone hunting, we continue to travel to the World Heritage area of Westland National Park. Tonight we had to stay in at Franz Josef Terrace Motel caravan site because it had been raining for 2 days non stop and we need to wash and dry all our wet clothes. We had a busy night trying to dry the clothes in the dryer, 3 rounds of drying but still not wet. So we had to hang everything inside the van since it is still raining outside. The rain and humidity makes the clothes even wetter =.=
Next morning, we went to the Franz Josef Glacier Valley walk***** 45 minutes of easy walk which leads us to this spectacular Glacier formation! Although it's raining and cloudy, we can still see the glacier clearly. The blue color reflected from the glacier is so pretty!
Waterfall gushing from the valley, as the continuous raining brings more and more waterfall!
Can't believe that we will walk the Fox Glacier (which is half an hour drive away) tomorrow! Franz Josef is so beautiful from far, what's more if we can touch it! Many years ago, back to when the Europeans settled here, there were glaciers up to where we are standing on this picture above. The glaciers have been eroding and changing everyday.
OMG such adventurous lads!!! Rafting at this quick milk glacier river, in the rain! So exciting to watch to maneuver through those rapids and rocks!
Look at the Valley, once shaped by the glaciers, which had been eroded after many years!
From the glacier, another 20 minutes walk to the Sentinel Rock***** gave us a good idea of how the glacier eroded.
FACT: the glaciers is formed by the weight of fresh snow which falls on the neve surface (catchment). This squeezes any air pressure to create soft ice. Once most of the air is forced out, hard blue ice is created. It's blue colour relected is not the colour of the glacier, but caused by the absorption of both red and yellow light (leaving light at the blue end of the visible light spectrum).
Maori story on the Westland Glaciers: Tears of the avalanche girl: Hinehukatere loved to climb in the mountains and she convinced her lover, Tawe, to join her even though he wasn't an accomplished climber. He climbed with her and was killed by an avalanche. Hinehukatere's tears flowed and flowed down the mountain and froze, forming the glacier of Franz Josef and Fox Glacier.
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