Monday, November 15 - Queenstown to Franz Josef Glacier

Monday was once again an early morning for we were looking at a 6 plus hour drive to the Franz Josef Glacier. The drive was beautiful, as many of them have been and the roads were often across mountain ranges involving multitudes of switchbacks. We arrived right on time and went to check in at the office down in the town for our heli-hike. We were nothing less than disappointed to find out that the weather up on the glacier was not conducive to helicopter flight. It was decision time and over a late lunch we determined that we wanted to stay the night here and take our chances on getting up on the glacier on Tuesday.
For the logistics, we needed to find a place to stay in Franz Josef and cancel our lodging down in Greymouth where we had planned to be this evening. We ended up making a great find with the help of a very nice woman in the information center and had a great room at a very reasonable price for the evening.
Since we were staying here, we decided to get a little adventurous for the afternoon and took a couple of hikes. The first was in the Glacier Park and we hiked to two different locations that offered great views of the end of the glacier. We then headed 25 km up the coast to a little village that hosted a recommended trail that took us up to viewpoints of both the coast and the alpine/glacial terrain.
For our final chapter of the day, we decided to seek out our first glow worm experience. To do this, we had to wait until dark and head out on a trail, just at the edge of town. We took the one flashlight that we had and ventured down the 30 minute path in the pitch black. Upon reaching the trails end, we were somewhat disappointed that we hadn’t seen any of the creatures, but our stroll back the path came alive with bunches of small glowing worms along the sides of the trail. For some reason, they appear to reside on the sides of the plants and rocks that are only visible when venturing back along the path. At about our 3rd section of worms, I took notice of how bright, or I should say not bright, the flashlight was becoming. We then picked up the pace along the rocky track and made it to car park just as the flashlight completely faded to black. We were very excited to have seen the glow worms and just as thrilled about making it back out of the trail area.