Fox and Franz Josef glacier

After leaving our freedom camp spot next to lake hawea, we had a long drive through the haast pass. As it had heavily rained most of the day before and all through the night, there were lots of waterfalls coming down from the snowy peaked mountains. We stopped at 2 falls on the way, these being the thunder falls and roaring billy falls. Thunder falls were quite impressive while roaring billy wasn't the most spectacular. Whilst walking on the path to the roaring billy falls, we came across a couple who were fixated on some moss on the ground.... wow! Moss, it was like they had never seen moss before, haha. So Lucy got a picture next to the amazing piece of moss.

It carried on raining all morning as we drove through the mountains, stopping for some expensive fuel in Haast. Before we reached Fox glacier, we stopped at knights point lookout.

When we arrived at fox glacier we drove directly to the car park near the foot of the glacier, here we had a quick lunch before walking to the glacier. As we walked up the side of the river we noticed quite big chunks of ice, so we picked one up for photos obviously. Further along the walk we came to the end of the track, where from this viewpoint we could look down on the foot of the 13km glacier. This was quite impressive, being around 600m from a glacier. Fox is the longest glacier in New Zealand. Fox and Franz Josef glaciers are 2 of the most accessable glaciers in the world.

Our next stop was at Lake Matheson, this is a relflective dark lake, and on a clear day you can see the southern alps towering over the area.... unfortunately it wasn't the clearest of days but still saw a good reflection in the dark waters.

That evening we stayed at family parks caravan park in Fox village. Here we booked our trip for the following day... we were actually going onto Franz Josef Glacier AND being transported by helicpoter!! Fingers crossed for good weather.

That evening we watched a dvd after a fabulous tea cooked by Lucy, fillet steaks served with cheesy mash and peppercorn sauce... mmm. The following morning there was a unfortunate power cut, so we had to shower in the dark and Lucy couldn't dry her hair... trust me, she was not happy!

Anyways, off we drove to the village of Franz Josef on the icy raods. When we safely arrived in the village of Franz Josef we had a quick visit to the i-site to stock ourselves up with more leaflets and information about where we were heading. Then we grabbed a pie each and a sausage roll to share from the local bakery, before going to the Franz Josef Glacier tours desk to pay for our afternoon trip.

We checked in for our trip at 11.50am, getting given some waterproof overpants before being taken into the boot room. In there we got boots, rain coats, socks and some crampons (ice spikes) to go onto the soles of our boots. We also got given a crampon bag, pretty much a big bum bag to store our crampons and any valuables we had. All geared up and ready to go...

We then got taken across the road to the helicopter headquarters where we got a safety briefing and weighed... we weighed abit more than normal with all our gear on. Neither of us had ever been in a helicopter before, so we were quite excited. All ready to go our group got split in half as we couldn't all go in one helicopter... we got the best seats, in the front next to the pilot. Not much room to be honest, especially with all our layers on. Lucy didn't dare move as there were hundreds of control buttons infront of her. Our journey to the glacier only took around 5 minutes but we loved it, Peter got a video of the flight. We got dropped off around half way up the glacier at 600m above sea level. As we left the helicopter we had to walk very careful as we didn't have our crampons on yet.

Next mission was to successfully get our crampons tied onto the soles of our feet, we did ok with a little help from our guide AJ. The sight of this huge glacier was awesome and we were stood right on it. For the next 3 hours this was our playground.... obviously we had to follow our guides instructions very carefully, as this is a very dangerous place aswell as being a very spectacular place. There were 10 of us in our group, and we had 2 guides, 1 being a trainee. We walked aggressively as this was the best way to get the spikes in the ice. Walking through thin areas of ice and at one point we got to shuffle down a tunnel, we got a video of Lucy attempting this which was funny. Even funnier were the attempts of 2 australian sisters, who were in histericks as they attempted to shuffle through the tunnel getting abit stuck in the process. As we walked round this huge glacier we got some really good photos, one being Lucy holding the guides ice axe. The part of the glacier we were at currently moves at around 1-2 metres per day, and further up the glacier it can move 3-4 metres per day. In some parts its 300m deep! This glacier will not always be here unfortunately, but were so glad we visited this amazing sight. Words can't describe how good this experience was.

After the 3 hours of exploring the glacier it was time for another helicopter flight and yet again we got the best seats :).... Forgot to mention that we had clear blue skies which was good timing, as the previous days the trips hadn't gone ahead due to poor weather.

Franz Josef Glacier = Amazing place and we had a fantastic trip that we will never forget :-D

Back down in the village, we got changed and headed to the glacier hot pools as entry was included in our tour. Here we relaxed in the hot pools talking about the days events and what a fantastic place New Zealand is. A nice way to finish a brilliant day.