Before making the half hour drive from Fox to Franz Josef I wanted to show Richard the impressive sight of the Fox Glacier. So after our usual breakfast of Hubbard's Very Fruitful cereal we drove to the car park and took the short walk to see the Fox Glacier terminal face. Like me Richard thought it was spectacular and much bigger than he had expected before seeing my photos.

We've since read in a newspaper that the body they couldn't recover from underneath an ice fall has recently been recovered 10km down the river. A lot of the press reports about the accident emphasised that the men ignored warnings and crossed the safety barriers. However, we both felt the signs were completely inadequate in that they weren't prominent enough, and the barriers consisted of some lengths of rope that didn't completely block the route.

We drove to Franz Josef as I was keen to see how this glacier compared to Fox. Before you get to the car park you can see the top of the glacier starting to cascade down the steep mountain.

We hobbled across the stony, dry, river bed to reach the viewing area of the glacier. Although I didn't think the terminal face was as stunning as Fox, the sheer steepness of the glacier was striking.

There was a short 30 minute walk to 'Peter's Pond' which also offered views of the glacier. We walked along, nearly missing the pond as it was small and a dirty green colour. Just before heading back Richard noticed the lovely reflections of the glacier in the water. So I quickly got the camera out and took a few snaps.

Although the Fox guided tours promote the glacier as been less steep and easier, the route to get on the glacier is much harder. With Franz Josef, the glacier walk is steeper, but the walk across the river bed to get to the terminal face is a lot easier. So I'd say there's not much to choose between them terms of effort and level of fitness required.

We stopped in Franz Josef town to have our sandwiches for lunch and nose around a couple of the shops. The Four Square supermarket whilst still over priced, was a lot cheaper than the supermarket at Fox. After picking up a few items for tea we drove just north of Franz Josef to Okarito where there was a cheaper camp site.

The camp site wasn't as cheap as we'd hoped at $20 compared with $12 at a DOC site. However, we were mildly entertained when a Flying Kiwi coach tour turned up. They are different from the other companies such as Magic and Kiwi Experience as they are tours rather than hop-on hop-off, and stay in out of the way places rather than just the main towns. We watched as they unpacked and erected identical tents in their reserved area, apart from two girls who camped away from the others because they wanted a decent nights sleep.

Katy