Glaciers! Yay!

We left the beauty of Queenstown behind to drive up the West Coast. We needed a pit stop, and we joked that we should stop in Haast. You may remember that we raved about this thrilling metropolis on our last trip. No? You don’t remember anything about Haast? Here’s a reminder. Our feelings about Haast remain exactly the same:

The Scenery Is Pretty, But This Is Pretty Much the Extent of Town. (This One’s for You, Henry’s Dad.)

After a four-hour drive, we made it to Fox Glacier. All we remember about this glacier was being able to see it from the parking lot. We also remember rain. Lots of rain. Lots and lots of freezing rain. Luckily this time around, it was sunny when we pulled up. We were a bit confused because we couldn’t see the glacier from the parking lot:

2011: Glacier View.

2014: Similar View.

Either that was just snow when we were there last, or the glacier has retreated significantly. Crazy, eh?

In order to see the glacier up close and personal, we had about an hour return hike:

Glacier Now.

Most of our pictures are just of rocks and truly aren’t that interesting. Sorry.

After viewing Fox Glacier, we drove half an hour north to Franz Josef Glacier. We are glacierologists. As it was still raining last time, we knew that we wouldn’t be able to see it and didn’t make the trek in.

In order to walk on either glacier, you have to book expensive tours. Though we are glacierologists, we didn’t really care enough to drop a bunch of money to see ice (don’t hate us):

Guided Glacier Walks.

Instead we did a couple of unguided walks at Franz Josef:

Jungle Before the Glacier. Weird Juxtaposition.

Franz Josef Glacier.

Snow on Glacier. Glacial Snow.

Our favorite part of the day was seeing reflections in another mirror lake:

We Can’t Get Enough of These Mirror Lakes.

Just Can’t Get Enough.

Our biggest mistake occurred when we checked into our hostel at Franz Josef. Both the owner and another worker asked if we stopped at Lake Matheson. With a dumb look on our face, we said no. They both said that this lake is a huge mirror lake…and that it would have been an absolutely perfect day to see mountain reflections. Neither of us felt like making an hour return trip on winding roads back to see it, but we’re bummed we missed it. We love mirror lakes, can you tell?

You picture glaciers as clean snow and shimmering ice, but these two had a lot of gray debris. It’s not that they WEREN’T impressive; it was just hard to grasp the size from our vantage point. Who’s paying for our helicopter tour into both during our next trip here?

Mirror Mirror

One thing we completely forgot to talk about in our Milford posts was the Mirror Lakes. (Okay, the truth is that it was taking forever to upload pictures. We cut the Milford posts short because we were sick of waiting to upload photos and wanted to go to bed.)

We finished the cruise around 11:15am and were excited to see the scenery that we missed while driving in the dark. We had heard about the Mirror Lakes from another backpacker, and so we pulled over to see what the fuss was about. Walking down the wooden bridge pathway, we kept saying to each other, “That really doesn’t look like a lake. It just looks like a grassy area.” It was only until we walked closer that we saw this amazing view:

Hint of the Mirror (But Not the Man in…RIP Michael).

We continued down the walkway and couldn’t get over how perfect the reflections were:

Like Glass.

One of Our Favorite Pictures.

You Clever Kiwis. Smart.

The Reflected Clouds Were So Clear.

Looks Fake, No?

So glad that we stopped here. We typically don’t remark out loud about how beautiful or pretty things are, but we can’t helping do that in New Zealand.