You would not believe how hard it rained here last night. It is the kind of rain you see at the very most intense part of a midwest thunderstorm…but it never stops. It rained buckets and buckets for many many hours. We are officially in the rainforest now, though, so I guess I’m not allowed to be too surprised. The forecast said that over the course of 6 hours they were expecting 130 – 160 mm of rain. That’s about 6 inches.

The tent sites here aren’t on grass due to the amount of rain regularly received. Instead we spent the night on a sheet of astroturf sitting over a bed of gravel. Sounds uncomfortable, but it was better than sleeping in a puddle. Our tent held up decently well in the deluge, although the floor seems to ooze water. Not sure what’s up with that.

Today we woke up to absolutely clear blue skies – I could not believe it. The city of Franz Josef is beautiful; it is set in a valley surrounded by snow capped peaks:

We decided to stay for the day & hike to the face of the glacier. We rode our bikes the 4km to the start of the glacier hiking trails. This included another trip over a one-lane bridge – this one crossed a turbulent river of totally grey water. The rainstorm last night increased the river volume and filled it with rock particles to the point where it didn’t even look like water. It was more like a giant mudflow with soccer ball sized chunks of ice floating in it:

View from the road to the glacier:

Jamie stops to pose on the road to the glacier:

Franz Josef glacier:

I managed to take this classic photo of Jamie contemplating the glacier. He stood just like this, staring at the glacier, for quite a long time. Turns out he was busy imagining what it would be like if the glacier exploded into a huge rush of water and ice, striking down all those naughty tourists who’d broken the rules and slipped under the rope for a closer look at the glacier. Typical.

A pretty reflection pool with Franz Josef glacier in the background:

Close up of a fern leaf unfurling:

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 4:18 pm and is filed under New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.