Next morning we thawed ourselves after what was a bitter night and got back on the road towards the first of the two famous Glaciers as you work your way south down the coast, namely, the Franz Josef.

The Fox and the Franz Josef glaciers were originally called 'Albert' and Victoria' after originally being 'discovered' by an early english adventurer but were since re-named in honour of more 'deserving' folk.

There are also actually around 60 glaciers along the west coast of New Zealand alone but these two are the most famous mainly due to being the most accessible by far.

Anyway, as we arrived in the township of Franz Josef it was actually dry and rather pleasant out so we set off on the walk to the terminal face of the glacier that takes you around an hour as you walk initially through rainforest to a clearing from which you can see the glacier in the distance at the far end of one big river bed of which at one time the glacier extended.

The first job was to negotiate a shallow but fast moving river that blocked the path of the track to the face of the glacier...

Aimee soon found a suitable path and proceeded to hop along a few rocks to the other side. Unfortunately my sense of balance is, well, rubbish frankly so lets just say my feet were squelching from then on!

Aimee…

So after feeling rather smug that I had managed the river without toe touching water we carried on towards the next yellow marker over the dead river bed. As the conditions here are so unpredictable with the river running from the glacier changing course unexpectedly etc, there is no set route to follow up to the glacier from this point, merely large wooden poles painted yellow and green giving you a rough idea which route is safe.

A few more crossings of the stream/river and about 45 minutes later we reached the glacier wall, or as close as we could get to it anyway, and had a rest whilst admiring the size of this frozen river wedged between two mountains!

You can get an idea of the size when you look at the pictures and notice the ant like trail climbing up the side which are obviously people!

After striping a few layers of clothes off along the way due to the much welcomed sun, we were soon donning them again as you soon feel the wind cool as it slides down the glacier towards you.

A few pictures later we were off back towards the camper van, happy that we have now seen this amazing glacier that might not be around much longer.

We were soon on the road again towards Fox glacier which we were both looking forward to as we hoped to do a guided walk up onto the glacier itself.
Along the route we made a quick detour to Lake Matheson which is famous for 'normally' being perfectly still and therefore giving a mirror image of Mount Cook. Unfortunately for us neither the lake or the mount were playing that day, with the later being surrounded in clouds even if the lake was still!

We called it quits for the day and headed to our campsite for the night, briefly passing a bar right next door that was advertising 'Happy Hour 3-5pm' on its Monteiths (NZ) beer. We decided we needed some 'happy' so we parked bot for the next few hours whilst sampling Monteiths Zesty brew which was rather refreshing. It was during this time that Mark stumbled across to Fox Glacier Guides and booked us up for the half day hike at 1:30pm the following day. So we had another drink to celebrate that and then thought we best get some sleep ready for our trip the next day.

We woke bright and early to glorious sunshine but this did not match our mood. Feeling slightly hazy to say the least we dragged our weary bodies to a local café hoping that some bacon and eggs might sort us out for our looming 4 hour hike. Unfortunately our plan failed and we soon found ourselves back at the campervan, having re-arranged our trip for the following morning, preparing for a day of R&R.

I had a great chat with mum for a couple of hours and then we watched a couple of (crap!) films on the Archos before we decided we best try and eat again and with neither of us fancying cooking we headed back to the café. Two shepherds pie and chips later and we were beginning to feel normal again but decided on an early night just to make sure we would be fit and ready the next day!