NZ Travels: Lake Wanaka and drive to Franz Joseph
Travelling New Zealand: Duration 3 weeks:December 2008: Day 8
We woke up pretty early and left the campsite, deciding to have breakfast in the town in a café by the lake. It was a bit windy but a beautiful sunny day. Much nicer that the UK weather still! We ate in a little café on the lakefront, I had scrambled eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and potato caked and trev had a plate full of pancakes with bacon. Yes we were totally full up afterwards. We then had a wander around town, there are a lot of local artists here and some of the work is really good. We bought a few bits in one of the local shops and then started the long drive through the mountains to the Franz Joseph Glacier.
I had read in one of the local papers that the weather was not good in the mountains at the moment, there were a couple of Chinese climbers stranded nearby on one of the mountain tops, who were unable to be rescued due to high winds. So I didn’t really know what to expect from the journey to the Glaciers as we would have to drive through the mountains!
Gates of Haast
The journey was actually ok, no rain, lots of very steep roads though. Quite a few waterfalls on the way and the clouds got closer and closer the higher we got. It was a long drive but we finally got to Franz Joseph. We stopped at a huge river on the way with really large boulders in it and took some photos. I later found out it is called the ‘gates of haast’.
On driving through we had to drive past the Fox Glacier which was closed, due to heavy rainfall. We hoped that the Franz Joseph Glacier was still passable as we had booked a heli-hike excursion, where you get flown in a helicopter to the top of the glacier and then hike around at the top, which looked amazing. When we arrived Franz Joseph was still open so we crossed our fingers for the morning!
We ate in ‘the landing’ a very nice bar and restaurant with huge meals and lots of friendly people. I got the impression all the guides and workers went there in the evening to relax as well as tourists. It started raining as we finished our dinner so we went back to the campervan site and parked up, then went to bed.
Franz Joseph town
Hi my name is Emma Butler, I'm Marketing Director and Owner of 
