Hokitika was hopelessly crowded, and even though we booked ahead, the closest place we could find to stay was further south in the town of Franz Josef Glacier. We spent the next day walking on the glacier and driving around the area. The following day we drove even further south past Queenstown to Te Anau.

The glacier walk started early in the morning.

Our first glimpse of the glacier, as we walk up along the moraine it left in the past few hundred years.

The sun kept rising above the mountains.

Another group walking up the trail to get onto the glacier.

Looking back down the valley carved out by the glacier, as we put the crampons onto our boots.

Getting on to the ice.

It's incredibly pretty walking on the glacier. The parts of the ice which contain no air are a wonderful shade of blue. We wouldn't have seen any of this if we hadn't gone on this walk.

Looking up towards the top.

A deep crevasse.

Our guide. He'd been glacier guiding for the past five months or so -- before that he was a Lord of the Rings guide, taking people to spots where particular scenes were filmed, showing them where the director stood, etc.

An aspiring law student we met on the tour from the Netherlands named Christoph.

Sometimes it seemed like every mountain face had a waterfall on it somewhere.

A heart-shaped hole in the ice.

On our way back down, we walked through one crevasse -- we took some desktop pictures of the pure blue ice.

Shards of ice. The glacier is falling down the canyon at the rate of a couple of meters per day, which leads to a lot of grinding and cracking noises. A substantial piece of trail fell off right under out guide's feet.

Off the ice, and back onto the rock.

The moraine had beautiful moss and lichen growing on the rock.

The last glimpse as we left, in the noonday sun.

Christoph joined us and we drove to Lake Matheson, which is known for its reflecting views of the Fox Glacier and the highest point in New Zealand, Mt. Cook.

There were wonderful ferns on trail around the lake.

Christoph will make a great lawyer

Alas, it was too cloudy to see Fox Glacier or Mt. Cook. The fog reflected nicely in the lake, though. We saw this phormium leaf origami and later noticed that the Maori have been doing it for a long time.

A triangular stump of a fallen tree.

It was too bad we had to make the drive from the glaciers to Te Anau in one day, since the entire trip was spectacularly beautiful. Here's Lake Hawea, north of Queenstown.

The "back road" from Wanaka to Queenstown goes past a place you can ride "monster trucks". They have a kilometer or so of fence adorned with a variety of bras.

We learned that this "back road" is the highest sealed road in New Zealand, going over Crown Ridge.

One of the two white Toyota Echos we drove in New Zealand (one on each island). Fortunately they're not as ugly as the original Echo.

We bypassed Queenstown and stopped to take a panorama of Queenstown Lake. Some folks we met later in Te Anau said they call it "Cranetown" because of the construction boom.

On to Fiord Country