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25th-26th April
When we got to Fox Glacier we drove through the tiny little village to the glacier car park. It had carried on raining all morning and places were starting to flood. The Fox river that the glacier leads into was in full flow and looked very strong and bursting. The notice at the beginning of the Fox Glacier valley walk said that the walk had been shortened but didn't mention that we wouldn't actually see the glacier! The barriers had been moved so far back because the river had flooded the track that we couldn't get any where near the terminal face. It was gutting but we did plan on coming back when we come back to do Franz Josef glacier trekking. We then headed to Lake Matheson, which in good weather reflects Mt. Cook and looks amazing on all the pictures. We obviously saw no such thing as we couldn't even see the surrounding hills but we had a nice walk around the lake in our waterproofs!
Where we parked for the night wasn't too far from the lake, at Clearwater stream campsite. It was just a gravel area off the side of the road. It was over the bridge from the Mt. Cook viewpoint but we didn't see a thing whilst we were there. It pretty much rained non stop the whole time. There was no stream when we got to the campsite but the next morning there was a full flowing white water river! Literally! The area where we had parked had flooded too and a huge puddle had formed over the gravel. We got out of there as soon as in the morning before we started floating! It was a pretty rough night with the heavy rain and wind, not that I noticed too much as I was too drunk and passed out! We had a good night and a good giggle playing stupid games and having a nice drink!
We were both not too bad when we woke up, but my hangover hit me bad later! We treat ourselves to a breakfast at a cafe in the village before setting off down South.
After much deliberation we decided that we would just keep heading south and come back to the glaciers from Christchurch as it was unlikely that the trips would be going ahead on Tuesday with the weather and it wasn't far off the same drive that we would be doing. We planned to drive down to Wanaka and then drive the same way back up to do the trip, then back down past Wanaka to Queenstown once we had better weather, which would be about 4 hours back up and then 4 back down again. The drive from Christchurch would be about 5-6 hours, then the same back again, but it would be a road we hadn't drove before, through Arthur's pass, which is suppose to be an amazing drive! The only issue we had was worrying that we might not get good weather again in a few weeks and then may never get to do it!
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