Next we had two one night stays in different places as we made our way West. First we stopped at Arthur’s Pass which is some tiny village in the mountains. After we unpacked we did the short hike to “The Devil’s Punchbowl”, which is a really tall waterfall. On the way I asked someone coming the opposite way how much further it was, and she told us that once we get to the viewing platform you can actually hop over the fence and there’s another pathway, and highly recommended we did. So of course once we got there we hopped over, and it led us right to the bottom of the waterfall which gave us some awesome pictures; even though we did get sprayed quite a lot.
That was pretty much the only thing we did in Arthur’s Pass, so the next morning we drove to Franz Josef. Franz Josef is notorious for its glacier, so we had planned to do the hike to go see it the day we got there. Unfortunately it was very anti-climatic: the glacier has receded so much due to global warming and is continuing to melt every day at a fast pace. This meant that the end of the hike is actually quite far from the glacier, we might as well bought binoculars. Although apparently the helicopter tours that take you on top of the glacier are supposed to be amazing, it wasn’t in our budget. Our view of the glacier was poor but it was interesting reading the facts along the way and seeing the points the glacier was at in certain years, though it’s quite sad to see the effects of global warming. After the hike our only option to salvage the evening was to have some beers and cocktails.
Lee Teivans Travel Blog 