Our host family, the Hannahs, took us across the Southern Alps for a weekend visit to the West Coast, where w stayed two nights in Hokitika. The town's bell tower is shown here, along with Martin, who substituted as our grandchild while we were in New Zealand.
We hiked up the river valley to the face of Franz Josef Glacier. Unfortunately, the sunny weather in Hokitika didn't last, and it was chilly and rainy for much of the hike. Fortunately, we all had dry clothes to change into, since we all got soaked.
The next two pictures were taken on opposite sides of the valley, 180 degrees apart -- they show an earthquake fault that crosses the valley almost at a right angle. The third picture shows a ranbow over the glacier.
The last images are from an enhanced-vertical-scale model in the Franz Josef Glacier Visitor Centre. In the left picture, two very similar-looking glaciers are visible -- Franz Josef on the left and Fox on the right. The red line indicates the road. In the right picture, the flat place is the Tasman Sea.
