New Zealand (Part IV): Haast Pass to Franz Josef Glacier

On Thursday, we hit the road for the West Coast, traveling via the Haast Pass. Our first stop of the day was at the Wine Education Centre in Cromwell, where we took "video tours" of six NZ wineries and tasted a pinot noir from each of them. Frankly, it was a pretty efficient way to do a tasting.

Prior to our lunch stop in the Makarora valley, we made a photo stop at Lake Hawea.

After lunch, we moved on, making a stop to hike across a suspension bridge over to the Blue Pools.



By mid-afternoon, we had reached the coastal town of Haast and headed north, taking a couple more hikes on our way. We took a beach walk along the Tasman Sea,

then a swamp forest hike at Ship Creek.



We arrived in the town of Franz Josef Glacier during the 6 PM hour, and had a group dinner at the hotel. Once it turned dark (after 9:30), Rosie led some of us into the woods where we saw some glow-worms, and also had a possum cross our path.

We had great weather on Friday morning for our hike to the Franz Josef Glacier.






Afterward, we had a couple of free hours in town before we were to move on toward Greymouth. I went to the visitor center, then did a little shopping for books and souvenirs, and also took some photos of the Fox Glacier.