Thwarted by Weather (or For the Love of Gortex)

As Kerrie mentioned in her after school special, we woke to cold showers and rain on Thursday. We left Greymouth early and headed south, stopping in a few places including Hokitika, a little town with a bunch of little shops. We ate at the uniquely named Cafe Paris (which was good, but not nearly as good as the Rough Guide suggested) and then wandered the town looking at the little shops and craft co-ops. After that, we hit the road again aiming to stop at Franz Josef Glacier for the night with the idea of getting up and see the glaciers the next day. Unfortunately, all of the parks were jammed with folks so there was no room at the inn (wrong holiday, I know) and we moved further south to Fox Glacier for the night. I dubbed the park we stayed in "camp mudpit", and the showers were once again cold, cold, cold, but we walked into town for our best dinner of the trip so far at a place called Cafe Neve.

We woke to continuing rain on Thursday (see Kerrie's post above) determined to stay in a real hotel some time in the coming week to recharge and take 3-hour hot showers. We were afraid we were going to be totally rained out of the glaciers, but we decided to don our rain gear and head out to see what we could see. We drove up to the base of Fox Glacier and did the 15 minute walk to the foot of the ice. Then we decided to take the real hike up to the Chalet Lookout, a point above Fox Glacier that's been a destination since the early 1900s. The hike was a beautiful wandering track through ancient rain forest (which I suppose makes not too surprising it was raining on us) up into the sheer hill on one side of the glacier valley. We were thwarted by weather again, though. With only about fifteen minutes left in the hike we came across a stream that had swollen in the rain and was impassible. We probably could have figured out a way to hop on rocks across somewhere up or downstream, but the water was high enough and moving fast enough that we were afraid that the continued rain would make crossing it during our return impossible. We were starving by the time we got back down the hill so we ate a quick snack then drove into town for takeway burgers from the saloon. We ate in the back of the van at about 3:30, and after we were stuffed with burgers and fries we realized that we had just had our Thanksgiving supper. And it was delicious.

(Actually posted by Hart)