We woke in the morning to pouring rain, and I trudged down to the Fox Glacier Guides shop to see if we could reschedule for the afternoon. They said the last trip of the day was at 2 and we'd have to go on the waitlist. Undeterred, I went back to the room, found Franz Josef Guides (the next town over, it has another glacier) and booked us the last two open seats on the 2:15 flight. We had to be out of the hostel by 10, so we headed over to Matheson Cafe, which was just outside of town. We passed a couple of hours by having breakfast, several cups of tea, and checking out the giftshop, and by 12:30, the skies were blue over the Cafe. We changed into hiking gear, and with crossed fingers, drove up towards Franz Josef. It was still cloudy over the mountains as we pulled into town, but the sun was shining at the Glacier Guides office. We reported to the desk, and the attendant told us she was about to call down to the flight line. There were about a dozen of us waiting on bated breath, all hoping desperately to get on the glacier and see the famed blue ice. She got off the phone and told us it would be another 10 minutes. The suspense was killing us. Finally, she came back and informed us that there was just too much cloud cover over the glacier, and we wouldn't be able to fly. It was the first huge disappointment of our journey. I'm not going to lie, the heli-hiking was probably the thing that both of us were looking forward to the most, so it hit us pretty hard. We considered staying the night and trying the next day, but the forecast was actually worse for the following day.
As much as it pained us, we took our refund, got back in the car and headed down the road. Thankfully, it at least stayed sunny along the coast, and we enjoyed the scenery on the 1 1/2 hour drive to Hokitika, where we were staying for the night. When we got to the resort, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the 'beachfront chalet' we had reserved was even nicer than expected. It was already 5pm, but in order to prevent the day from being a complete waste, we did our laundry and ventured out into town to find some dinner. We managed to salvage the evening with some awesome stargazing and a trip to the 'glow worm dell' conveniently located across the street. It was our first intro to the phosphorescent larvae that can be found in caves all over NZ under the right conditions; we actually have a pretty sweet tour of glow worm caves coming up when we visit the north island. Definitely not our best day, but we were ready to move on to our next location: Golden Bay.
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