Stopover at Fox Glacier

Franz Josef was so good, it seemed like Fox would be at least worth a look. It's not one of the stops that many jump off at, but I do, and after a short journey down the road I drop in at Ivory Towers. Nice little well kept place, but without the value factor that Chataeu Franz has. $25/night here and no spa and the rooms are really small with nowhere to put anything. Not that that is an issue for me as I pack extremely light, but with everyone's gear on the floor you have to do a running jump to get to a bunk. It seemed as if the other dorms were empty too which wasn't so appealing that everyone was squeezed into this one or two dorms.

With the foot still being a bit of a bother, walking around this place is out of the question as everything is about 4-7km away from the centre of town, so I hire the bike at $4/hr which would be fine if everything worked on them, but realisitically these bikes weren't worth $4 to buy. It does the job anyway, and head straight on over to Matheson Lake where's there's a nice cafe which is situated there for its view over the lake reflecting Mt Cook's icy cap in the lake. While I'm doing a quick scoot on the bike around the lake I see Martin and Alex again! (I thought they were heading North at last report). Alex says that in Germany if this sort of thing happens three times then we have to buy the spottee a drink. It was probably a bit early for that, so we had a coffee instead.

I push the pedals back through town and out onto the highway and up to the lesser known road that has the higher views of the glacier, and then back over to the main road that leads up to the terminal face. Unfortunately, due to the heavy rain over the last week, the terminal walk has been closed off due to landslides so only a quick view from a distance.

Back at base, I catch up again with Lauren who I'd met on the Callery-Waiho track a few days earlier, and she seemed surprised that I had made it through.. well her concern was probably warranted.