Rainforest/Glacier

POSTED BY SI

Franz Josef is a rather unusual place, comprising two rather spectacular environments. 

It's a rain forest. Think it's wet at home? Average rainfall in England is less than a metre a year. Here it's over five. UK had 175mm of rain this January, a record. Here that's not uncommon in a week. It's wet. 

All the guidebooks fail to mention the single most important thing here: bring a brolly. Perhaps they expect you to expect rain in a rainforest. 

Our campsite is actually in the rainforest. It's bizarre. 

The bar here has a nice mantra:

The other environment you don't see everyday is the glacier. Truly spectacular, it's seven miles long. You can walk to see the terminal face, again through rainforest. The two together is quite surreal. 

You round a bend and there it is. 

We were quite lucky that when we arrived there was a break in the clouds, the sun shining on the face so it had an ethereal glow. By the time we left half an hour later it was shrouded in cloud. Again, pictures (and rain on lenses) don't do it justice. 

The meltwater coming off it forms a river, thick with grey rock dust the ice has gouged from the Southern Alps as it crunches down at 1-5 metres a day, 10 times faster than the Swiss Alps glaciers. 

The water is just above freezing, and the 'smoke' is steam as it mingles with the warmer waters pouring from the cliffs of the rainforest. 

We've been booked on two chopper flights up to the top of the glacier today, but it's been too cloudy to fly. Hopefully tomorrow morning will be clearer.