Waking up with my first hangover in New Zealand (trying to stop drinking whilst here has proven difficult) was a painful experience as we had to be up early and onto the bus. The Kiwi Experience likes to show you as much of New Zealand as possible and today was no exception. We pulled into the Bushman Centre, a place where Bambi was a terrorist. Deer were introduced to New Zealand by settlers and rapidly set about eating all the local plants and generally being an ecological nightmare. Something had to be done! Enter, the hunter. Hunting deer was a big deal for a while as the pests were eradicated, then when the deer were nearly all gone some bright spark decided it would be a good idea to farm the deer for venison, thus the deer farming industry in New Zealand was born. However there was one big problem. The deer had been being culled so they weren't as widespread as they used to be. This meant a job for the helicopter hunters. These insane men leapt out of helicopters to catch running deer which would then be trussed up and hauled out to the burgeoning deer farms. A lucrative business indeed. This is 100% true too, I watched a video about it all. After seeing this bizarre film we tried possum pie in the café, which was a bit bland and stringy if I'm honest. I thought it tasted a bit like pork but I think it was more the sage in the gravy that I could taste. It didn't help my hangover but I can tick it off my list of things to try!

Our thirst for pie satiated could mean only one thing - back to the bus! We were driving through glacier country and the Westland national park and could see proper mountains from the bus. By proper I obviously mean snow-capped. We were arriving in the New Zealand of postcards and Lord of the Rings. Hooray. Our arrival in Franz Josef was mid-afternoon and we checked into our digs where a lazy afternoon was spent on my behalf, mainly sleeping, reading and eating, as all good hangover days should be. I also went and booked a skydive, dragging Susie along with me and encouraging her to book one too. Such are my persuasive powers (or maybe she just wanted to do a skydive) that she duly obliged and we were booked in for the following morning after our glacier heli-hike.

We awoke to bright blue skies and sunshine on the morning of our heli-hike up the Franz Josef glacier. Up, ready and out in good time to saunter to the booking office where we were told…it's too windy for the helicopter and the tour is cancelled until tomorrow. Gutted doesn't quite cover it as everyone had really been looking forward to wandering around on the ice. Luckily there is lots to do around Franz Josef, mainly involving various glacier walks so we decided to go to the face of the glacier. Now this is where I had originally envisaged going on the glacier, but since it is melting pretty quickly at the moment a large hole has appeared in the ice at the face so it is unsafe to climb in that area and the tour that walks around that area isn't running. Instead you can walk, for free, up to a cordoned off area about 200m from the foot of Franz and see the glacier from there in relative safety, assuming there are no landslides from the surrounding cliffs! It was a relatively long walk and I wasn't disappointed by my first view of the glacier. At first glance it just looks like a big pile of snow but as you get nearer you can see how solid it is and how it has shaped the surrounding countryside. Franz Josef used to flow 25km to the sea but is gradually getting smaller, current length is 12km, but it is still one of the fastest growing glaciers in the world due to the high snowfall into the bowl of snow which feeds it from the Southern Alps. Looking back into the valley we walked down to get to the foot of the glacier definitely makes you appreciate the power natural forces exert onto our landscapes as the glacier has helped create it with its continuous growing and retreating. Now we were all moaning that the walk had been called off as it wasn't windy in the village itself, but once we got out into the valley floor it was extremely blustery and I could see why they couldn't take the helicopter out that day. I had fingers crossed for the next day though. Everyone else walked back to town but Susie and I decided to take a diversion and go past Paul's Pool, a kettle lake created by chunks of ice left over from the retreating glacier melting. It was meant to be a mirror lake but the wind was so strong it just whipped the water up into little waves, but it still looked pretty so it wasn't a wasted trip.

The evening was spent in the hot pools which was free as part of our glacier trip fee, and we wouldn't be able to use it the next day since most people were getting on the bus to Wanaka immediately after the glacier walk. Relaxing in 40 degree pools was a lovely way to end a day wandering around Franz Josef and made me ready for an early night, after watching a little bit of Olympics in the bar obviously. This evening was also my first experience of Kiwi dip, a bizarre sounding concoction of onion powder and reduced cream. It was OK if a bit rich for my tastes (and this coming from a girl who can eat chocolate for breakfast).

Finally the day of our heli hike arrived and this time it was actually on, which was just as well since we had to be at the office at ridiculous o'clock as well as packing all our stuff up and, in my case, storing it at the hostel office as I was moving to a cheaper hostel down the road for my two extra days in Franz. Now, to the heli hike itself. As I said the original glacier hike is at the face of the glacier but it's not possible to do it at the moment, which as it turns out was actually better for us as we got a helicopter flight to take us onto the glacier itself instead, which I'm sure anyone would agree is infinitely better. Appropriately suited and booted we left the HQ of the hike company and walked over the road to the helicopter landing pad. Having never flown in a helicopter before I was very excited and slightly nervous, especially when they show you all the warning signs showing how not to get your head chopped off. Now I don't know if anyone has been in or near a helicopter when it is taking off and landing but it isn't half noisy, as well as blowing a fair gale from the rotor wash. I was surprised at how powerful a gust is created but I suppose it does have to lift it into the air. Anyway 6 of us piled in for our brief 7 minute flight up onto the glacier. Now 7 minutes doesn't sound long but it is really fun, as well as the views over the glacier and across the mountain ranges being jawdroppingly awesome. Wearing headphones to hear the pilot is always fun as well, especially when you're told that he is a beginner pilot and that's why the lightest passengers went in his helicopter.

Landing on the glacier was a little hair-raising, and I evidently have no sense of perspective since I thought we were a lot closer to the glacier than we actually were until I saw the group that had gone up earlier and they looked like tiny little ants! Since I'm writing this blog right now we evidently landed safely onto the ice and with our guide, Bronwyn, we set off traversing this humongous block of ancient ice. Up close the glacier isn't actually what I expected it to be, it was covered in rock slides in some parts so wasn't the uniform white you might expect, and, indeed, neither was it white. In fact it was more of a turquoise-blue in many areas, something to do with oxygen being trapped in the ice and causing the blue colour spectrum to get trapped in the molecules or something. Science was never my strong suit. An interesting fact for you all here, apparently the mountain ranges, the Southern Alps, which the glacier is situated in, would be higher than the Himalayas if they weren't created from schist rock which is really fragile and breaks and wears away rapidly. Pub quiz points for you there. Clambering over the glacier itself was a lot more fun than I anticipated, if nothing else because I enjoyed wearing dangerous weapons, ie. crampons, on my feet immensely and jabbing about on the ice had a certain perverse pleasure in it, very cathartic indeed. It was also a little hair-raising at times, even with crampons on it is easy to slip and some of the crevasses you have to step over are pretty deep, like an ice covered version of 127 hours. I think until you've been on a glacier you don't appreciate the wide range of blues that are actually visible in something traditionally thought of as white, I was very surprised. Climbing down through blue caverns and squeezing between aquamarine fissures is an experience I will likely not repeat and it will stay with me for a very long time. Especially since Franz Josef is one of only three glaciers in the world that descends from mountains into temperate rainforest. Once in a lifetime indeed.

Once we had completed our tour of the ice it was back onto the helicopter (front seat view this time) and a short trip over to Franz Josef. For the rest of the bus it was time to move on but for me and Susie, who had our skydive to do that afternoon, it was time to move hostels. Now here I should do a little aside about Susie since we were pretty much inseparable from Kaikoura to Queenstown and I hope we manage to keep in touch. Now Susie is the same age as me, a chemistry teacher and a Geordie with a penchant for chicken and peanut butter sandwiches which she claims is just like satay but I'm not sure if I believe her. She is also a triplet which is the first triplet I have ever met, this trip has had a lot of firsts! We held a mutual appreciation for Maximo Park, a healthy respect for hummus and enjoyment of a good walk. We were also two solo Northerners on a bus predominantly made of Southerners so we had to stick together. I am also forever grateful to her for introducing me to 'Beached Az', one of the more hilarious cartoons to hit youtube in recent years. I highly recommend you google it. Watching that video did mean that the two of us walked around saying 'it's musleeding', 'I eat plinkton' and 'puhtato chup' for about a week and I don't think the others realized what we were on about. Oh well.

Becca