Greymouth to Fox Glacier. Left by 10am. Cloudy. Stopped by sea. Got to Fox Glacier in time to go to Matheson Lake cafe - lunch. V. good. Walk round lake but Mt. Cook in cloud. Lots of helicopters landing from trips. Poor chalet on camping - busy.
On the map the road south of Greymouth looks as if it hugs the coast. It does, but spectacular sea views are few and far between. On the whole a kilometer or two of flat, scrubby looking fields separate the road from the sea. The whole area feels remote and a tad run-down. Though the Tasman and Kahurangi National Parks to the north and Fox Glacier, Haast Pass and Milford Sound to the south are both popular destinations, the bit in-between in much less frequented. We speculated that the the northern parks were accessed mainly from Nelson and the southern ones from Queenstown resulting in a visitor 'dead zone' in-between.
From time to time Highway 6 takes a brief detour inland through quiet forests. Often you have the road to yourself. It feels peaceful and secluded.
We reached Fox Glacier campground in the early afternoon. We booked-in then headed off immediately to Lake Matheson, the cafe there has great reviews and we had not yet managed lunch. A late lunch for us represents some kind of existential crisis, a missed lunch would be bordering on the apocalyptic.
Saved from impending annihilation by a delicious quiche we set off along with everyone else to follow the way-marked path around the lake. It wends through beautiful forests full of tree ferns, unique flowering shrubs are scattered by the wayside, wooden walkways cross fragile wetlands. This is not why people flock here. What has made Lake Matheson world famous is the much vaunted 'jetty viewpoint' - an iconic prospect of the snowy Mount Cook range reflected in tranquil water. If you are very lucky and arrive here late or early in the day, in autumn or winter, under clear conditions you will be rewarded with a photo that looks like this:
Of course 95% of visitors won't see this, coach loads must turn up in pouring rain and content themselves with buying a postcard or stand at the viewpoint information board, like we did, and appreciate the magnificence of the invisible mountains un-reflected in the water.
In fact as the afternoon progressed the clouds lifted a little. In the end I managed to take one photo of the lake that I liked. What the shot lacked in clarity was compensated by a kind of soulfulness; despite the hype and mass tourism Lake Matheson exudes a quiet loveliness that we have not managed to entirely destroy by packaging it as 'iconic'.
I think we loved forest walks as much as the famous viewpoint. It was our first time among New Zealand's unique primordial forests. They are very special places and is difficult not to be affected by their presence.
As soon as we got back to our cabin at Fox Glacier campground I took to social media, what I wrote on Facebook captures the moment better than anything I can add now:
Lake Matheson was definitely the high point of our stay at Fox Glacier. The camping bungalow we rented was more of a shed than a cabin, small, in need of repair and not particularly clean. As ever, despite the very basic equipment, Gill managed to magic us an evening meal. The motel style accommodation we have stayed has been much better than the self catering chalets on campsites though they cost roughly the same.
Next morning Fox Glacier provided a final surprise. The place is one of the locations for helicopter tours to Mount Cook. The heliport must have been next to us. Sunrise excursions are especially popular resulting in a rude awakening before dawn as a squadron of tourist flights took-off sounding disturbingly like the opening credits of Apocalypse Now.
