Fox and Franz Josef Glacier

It took us about 3 hours to get to the glaciers - surprising really as our cruiza could get up to 120kmph but as soon as you get to a hill this became 20kmph, and given that the south island is mostly hills and mountains 3 wasnt bad..!
We arrived at dinner time but made it to the glacier office before they closed to book our glacier hike day trip for the following day - approx $120 each which is about 60 euros.
So after dinner a la van again we just chilled out and found an interesting and very cool place to go and use the internet...

Once done we set about transforming the van once more into our bedroom - it was like the bedtime routine and beginning to bore the 2 of us!!
We started the following morning at 10am and had to get all our gear - boots, socks, waterproofs and crampons (metal spikes).
There was about 20 of us going and it was a gorgoeous clear winters day and our giude was called AJ -who had a touch of madness in him but he was well up for the craic so it was a good start..

We started walking through a bit of a forest first and then up the river before you arrived at the bottom of the glacier where you got your first views of the caves and the immense size of the glacier.

We were divided into 2 groups one for the more relaxed walking trip and the other for the more adventurous "wet" trip... so you guessed it we went for the latter and once we managed to get our crampons on we were off!
Aj took us up, over, down , through and around the glacier all day and it was amazing..we stopped for lunch for about a half hour just to take in the views and scenery which were all just stunning!

AJ practically hacked our pathway through the ice all day with his axe and we found ourselves jumping across ice crevasses, to trying to fit through them and also in and out of ice caves ... the whole day was just great!

We finished up about 5pm that evening and even though we all had wet feet, boots, socks etc it had been a fab day...
Once back to base we had thought of staying another night but bad weather had been forecast and when your sleeping in the back of a hiace van wind, rain and snow are what you try to avoid... so we decided to move onto our next stop - Hokitika...