We headed south down the beautiful west coast road to the Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers, which are unusual in terminating within a couple of miles of the sea. We viewed the Franz Joseph glacier from a distance as changing riverbed conditions made the walk up to it unsafe. We were able to walk to within 100 metres of the Fox glacier which glowed an eerie blue and had an icy blue river pouring out from an ice cave at its leading edge. It was very cold. There was a sheer, absolutely vertical cliff, some hundreds of feet high which met the gravelly river bed at a right angle. It made me think of my climbing friends who would no doubt have been itching to try and climb up it. The campsite at Fox was right in town so we went out for tea at a country and western pub and discovered how enormous NZ portions of food are. We'd ordered quite modestly but still had to take most of it back to the van in a doggy bag. They have some quite decent beers too, a little more beery than Oz lagers, especially Mac's Copperhop which soothed our 80-shilling cravings a little.
Lake Matheson, near Fox, is famous for providing the perfect reflection of Mount cook and Mount Tasman in its still, dark waters. When we were there the mountain tops were wreathed in cloud but we caught occasional glimpses of the upper slopes and were taken with the Rorschasch reflections of the tree ferns and reeds surrounding the lake.
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