We had a lovely peaceful night in the rainforest. Despite the ravaging sand flies this is a great camp site. After brekky we drove the short distance to the glacier car park. The access road took us alongside the Waiho River with it's wide dramatic bed full of rocks, huge boulders and strewn timber. The weather today was bright and warm. The sky was blue except for some big billowing clouds that were clinging to the hills and mountains. The trail to the glacier took us through some forest, onto the river bed past lots of gorgeous little waterfalls and along to the viewing points near the base of the glacier. The glacier looked spectacular in the distance and became even more so the closer we got to it. It was an awesome and very impressive sight and the best thing we have seen in New Zealand. It is all just green grass, trees, hills and water. There's not much variety here unlike in Australia. The glacier though was something that Australia doesn't have. The glacier is twelve kilometres long and terminates nineteen kilometres from the sea. Along with the Fox Glacier it is unique in descending from the mountains to less than 300 metres above sea level, amidst the greenery and lushness of a temperate rainforest. It has retreated quite considerably though since 2008 meaning that the safe viewing areas are now further from the base than they were. Despite this it was an incredible sight to see. At the viewing areas there were signs warning not to go any closer due to ice falls and rock falls. The terminal face is melting and is very unstable. Tourists who hadn't heeded the warnings had been killed by falling ice. Despite these warnings we noticed two very stupid people who had ignored them. After we had taken loads of photos of this big hunk of ice we walked back towards the car park and took another trail to Peters Pool. The path took us up a hill through the rainforest to a cute little kettle lake which was formed by ice melting amongst glacial moraine about 200 years ago. There was a great view from here to the glacier and it would have been a lovely tranquil spot to stay for a while if it wasn't for all the inconsiderate big gobbed people. From here we followed the trail further through the lush rainforest until we got back to the car park. We had some lunch and then headed back to the camp site where we chilled out until bedtime. Whilst we ate our tea whilst the sandflies ate us!