We ended up spending two weeks in Fox Glacier from 19th August to 1 September. During this time we worked in a hostel in exchange for free accommodation. The work mainly involved bed making and cleaning, with Alan occasionally tackling more manly jobs such as wood chopping and gardening. We were meant to work about 3hrs a day, from 10am-1am but more often than not we finished early as the hostel wasn't that busy. After the first few days of sunshine it rained almost non-stop for the rest of our time there. I've never seen so much rain, but apparently it rains over 200 days a year there, so everyone else seemed to think it was pretty normal.

On the first day after work we went on a walk to nearby Lake Mattheson with another girl from the hostel. It is a famous lake as when the weather is good it reflects the mountains perfectly in the water. It took about an hour to walk there along a very flat, straight road. It was a pretty boring walk. Once we got there the walk around the lake took about an hour and was quite nice although it was too windy and cloudy to get the really good views. We could't face the walk back and managed to hitch a lift with a guy from Yorkshire who was visiting the area. The journey took about two minutes in the car. We were very grateful.

Fox is a tiny village with a population of about 250. There is one overpriced shop, and two pubs. We had a couple of nights out in the village with Mandy, the other girl working at our hostel. She'd been there about a week before us and managed to befriend most of the locals. They were a friendly bunch, one of the offering to lend us his car after we'd known him about 5 minutes. He also had an impressive ginger mullet, they dig that kind of thing over here. We got a few drinks bought for us. All the locals agreed that the people from the other nearby glacier village, Franz Josef, weren't very nice. There seems to be a bit of a rivally there. The pubs reminded us of local pubs in Yorkshire, bascially staying open until everyone left, and everyone knowing each other.

On a lot of days we basically did nothing much due to the constant downpour of rain. The hostel luckily had an impressive dvd collection and cinema lounge. Annoyingly people kept putting Lord of the Rings on, one girl even watching all three in a row (extended edition!). There were a few storms and one night we had a powercut. It was still off in the morning and I was hoping this would get me out of doing the vacuuming, but unfortunately it came back on just as we were about to finish work.

One day we droveover to the nearby town of Franz Josef with Mandy and another girl from the hsotel. Ann, the lady who ran the hostel lent us her van which was nice of her. Franz Josef is about 30mins away. It is slightly bigger than Fox, with an atm and better supermarket, but is otherwise quite similar. First we drove up to the glacier to have a look. It was pretty impressive although we couldn't get to close to the edge as it's dangerous. I'd never seen one before. After that we went to the hot spa pools for the afternoon. We managed to get in half price from working at the hostel which was a bonus. The pools we great, outside in a forsety area. It started to hail really heavily while we were in there which was great fun. We had a good day, it was nice to get out of Fox for a bit.

One afternoon, when the rain had finaly stopped we took to bikes from the hostel and went for a bike ride to Fox Glacier. After biking up a huge hill we had to leave the bikes behind to go through a forest track, across a bridge and down to the terminal face of the glacier. The scenery was lovely. We walked up a lot closer to this glacier and got some good photos. You're not allowed to go to close or on the glacier without a guide though, as its dangerous. Apparently some tourists died recently when they ignored all the warning signs and wandered into an ice cave which collasped.

On our last day in Fox we decided we really should try and go on a guided glacier walk. We asked Ann the night before if we'd be able to get any discount and she said she'd see what she could do. The next day she told us we could have it for free as long as it didn't fill up to much. We were really pleased as it was something we wanted to do and it was quite expensive.

We headed over to the glacier guiding shop after work. We changed into their boots and waterproof gear as is was raining quote heavily. After that we all got into the bus and we drove down to the foot of the glacier where we'd been a few days before. We walked up to the foot of the glacier, having to cross a few streams on the way. There was a big rainbow. It was still raining intermittantly, but we had big rain macs on and waterproof trousers so it was alright. There were about 16 in our group and two guides. To get up onto the glacier we had to hike up a track which basically consisted of loads of steps. It was quite hard work. There is a danger of rock sliding up in that area, and everyday someone from the guiding company has to sit there on the look out for falling rocks. We finaly gor onto the glacier after about an hour and a half. We all had to strap crampons on our boots to stop us slipping on the ice. We were on the glacier for about 25mins, and we walked quite slowly around a track ans steps which had been carved out of the ice while the guides told us about the various geological features. It was really strange walking around big giant ice hill, cracks and arches. Some of the ice was really blue.Alan took many photos. It was good fun. Then we had to walk all the way back. It was about a 4 hour round trip in all and a good way to end our stay in Fox GLacier. We caught the bus to Punakaiki early the next morning.