The town of Haast is a town of fewer than 100 people, so there weren’t many breakfast options available. We stopped by the visitors center to ask the ranger which activity was better, seeing the glaciers or visiting Mt. Cook as one last sanity check on our plans. She recommended the glaciers, so we continued toward Fox Glacier and Franz Josef. She also recommended stopping at the Salmon Farmland Cafe for breakfast if we could wait another 45 minutes to eat.

The ranger also recommended stopping at Ship Creek to walk around the beach and up to the lookout tower. And again, being on the west coast, we were attacked by a lovely swarm of sandflies. No matter how quickly you get in and out of the car, they always find their way in. (I felt terrible turning in our rental car in Picton as we probably had a good few sandflies killed on the windows inside, and they definitely splatter blood when you kill them.) It was about a 20-minute drive to Paringa for the cafe, and it didn’t look like much from the road. But they had several pools of salmon along with some other fish and eels when you walked up the ramp to the cafe. I grabbed a bagel with salmon and capers while Grant did cream cheese and jalapeños on his. Since the ATMs haven’t liked any of our cards, we hadn’t been able to get any cash out, so when their machine wasn’t working due to spotty wifi, we had to wait and see if their wifi would reset for the device to work. Once we finally paid, Grant tried to mention Starlink to the waitress, but she had no interest in listening to his pitch.

With bellies full, we headed back on the road toward Fox Glacier. Everything we had read about the town said it was small and most hotels were likely booked, so we decided to stay in Franz Josef. The ranger in Haast told us there was a lookout point in Fox Glacier where you could drive to get a view of the glacier if you didn’t want to hike the hour to the bottom of the glacier. We decided to go to the lookout point to make it to Franz Josef before dark, and we knew the forecast had clouds rolling in so we wanted to make sure we could get a view. Although the clouds were pretty thick, we saw a small glimpse of the glacier from afar. But the more exciting thing at the lookout point was the keas. These birds are the world’s only alpine parrots, and they are nicknamed the “naughty alpine parrot” as they have grown accustomed to humans and can be destructive to cars since they like to bite the rubber trims on the car doors. We also read they are endangered so we were glad we got to see them.

After grabbing some pictures (mainly of the keas), we continued our journey to Franz Josef and checked into the hotel for the next few days. We headed into town to talk with Air Safaris to see if we could get on a scenic flight to see the glaciers from above. However, with the thick clouds rolling in, they were grounding most of the longer flights. The receptionist told us we could check with some of the helicopter companies in town to see if they were getting a flight in that afternoon. Most helicopter flights weren’t heading around Mt. Cook and the glaciers and were doing short 15-minute rides. We decided it wasn’t worth the money we’d spend on a short flight. We stopped by Air Safaris again to see if they were getting any flights in. It turns out a car wreck an hour north of the town caused a power outage, so no one was flying for the rest of the afternoon due to comms being down. The next day was supposed to rain, so she took our information and would let us know availability for flights Saturday morning. Since flights were grounded, we headed to hike to Franz Josef Glacier viewpoint.

We thought the hike would be much longer than it was, but it was only about a 15-minute walk to the stopping point. It was crazy to see the sign showing where the glacier was over 100 years ago and where it is now. When we first arrived, the clouds covered most of the glacier, so we decided to wait a few minutes to see if they would clear. And fortunately for us, they did! And a good thing we did since that would be the only time we would see it that weekend. We headed back into town to figure out dinner. Since the power was still out, only a few restaurants had generators, so we headed to The Landing for dinner. It felt like we were back in Kenya with the huge portion sizes! Needless to say, we had leftovers to bring back with us, which turned out to be dinner the next night.