on our way to franz josef we stopped at a greenstone factory in hokitita, that was quite gud watching the carvers doing their thing. we then went to a teeny town called ross to do panning for gold... i was rubbish and got all of two specks, stupid gold panning. $6.50 my bum. i couldnt even find the piece of jade they actually put in your dish before you start haha.

we arrived at franz joseph and the southern alps to our caravan. this stoneage caravan was rubbish, we hated it. it smelt funny, had half a set of curtains that werent long enough, had a window that wouldnt shut, the doorhandle keapt falling of, and the tele gave us false hope as it only played videos and had no arial, not to mention the red velvet 'decor' on the roof accompanied by a mirror on the roof.. nice. luckily only two nights there though, its rough having no money haha.

i didnt even have any terrys chocolate orange to cheer me up anymore haha.

the next day we did a glacier hike, that was proper class. we loved it and the rain held back so we were realllly lucky. we decided to do franz josef glacier over fox glacier because two men got killed there last week when the ice fell on them and one is still trapped in the ice. so we figured you might not be able to go on the ice there.

the glacier was huge, it had alot of rocks on top because theres a river coming out of the glacier and some ice fell and blocked it 2years ago and the water built up inside and exploded through the ice with 50,000tonnes of water and rocks. crazy!

it wasnt as cold as you thought it would be on the glacier, the ice looked really blue in places which was cool. and the novelty of crampons hadnt worn off haha. we really enjoyed it actually. then back to the caravan haha.