Drive to Franz Joseph Glacier

This was a driving day. We had to get from Queenstown to Franz Joseph Glacier. To give you an idea of the roads, including a stop for lunch and a couple of short scenic lookout stops it took us 8 hours to drive around 400 km.

There is a "Scenic" shortcut between Queenstown and the town of Wanaka on the way to Franz Joseph that cuts almost 50 km off the trip. We took the turn following a pokey driver and hoped he would turn off early.



Immediately the road became very steep and got narrower until it seemed under a full 2 lanes. It then began to carve guardrail-less along the edge of a mountain. After a very short but frightening time we found a place to turn around and headed back to the road more travelled. Looking at the map above it is clear we made the right choice because the road just got worse after that.

The first voluntary stop was at a scenic lookout overlooking a small lake.


We continued on and after safely reaching Wanaka the long way we stopped for lunch. In general we have had very good luck lunching in these small town cafes and this was no exception. We drove back out to the highway and made our way slowly to Franz Joseph.

They seem to economize on their roads by making most of the bridges one lane only. If you look at the blue sign under the yellow " ][ " Road Narrows sign you can see that there is a larger arrow indicating who has right of way, but our experience is that though the drivers are generally quite polite, they tend to observe a first come first served approach.


Debbie snapped a few scenery shots as we drove ...



... and we also made some short stops to see the sights.


Here is the hot number I got to drive with while in the South Island standing next to our rental car.


We came upon one of the One Lane Bridges that passes over a nice rock fall and stream so we stopped to get a closer look.





Debbie likes to have one shot of me driving, for some reason.


It must have been a straight section of road because her eyes were glued to the front for most of the trip. The rental car was actually a pretty sporty model with lots of V6 power and good sticky tires so I found driving through the winding mountain roads kind of fun even if Debbie was anxious.

The road leads eventually to the west coast and the ocean and there were quite a few scenic stops though by this time we were pretty tired of driving and didn't make many stops.




The town of Franz Joseph Glacier is a small alpine town that seems to have no purpose other than to serve the tourists who come to see or hike the glacier. Aside from motels and restaurants and visitor's centres there is very little else to the village.


The scenery is nice, though.


We checked into our motel, dropped our gear and went out for dinner. It was good we rushed since all of the restaurants in town had a 7:00 cutoff for dinner. We arrived at 6:55 at the one we chose and had a marginal meal (undercooked fish and chips which is common here - I usually ask them to cook it well done or crispy but forgot that day).

After dinner we wandered up the street to a cafe with a second floor balcony overlooking the street and stopped for a couple of drinks before heading off to unpack and crash.


Up early for glacier hiking tomorrow!

Until then,

Don