We got up all early and organised hoping to go down to the office and get on a walk this morning. When we went in at around 8.10am she said they were full this morning and this afternoon for walks but they have spaces for tomorrow morning. We said thanks and that we'd think about it and went back to the van thoroughly disappointed. We sat back in the van and had a think about what to do. Our plan had been that if we didn't get on the morning one and managed to get on the afternoon one that we would go and do a few of the walks you can do unguided around the area. So we decided this would still be a good idea seen as we were up so early we would be there before a lot of other people. We just had to decide what to do about the Glacier walk. In the end we decided we both really wanted to do the walk so James went back in to ask about two places for tomorrow. When he came back he said he'd booked two places for tomorrow morning, he just had to give our names and some details and we could cancel it up to an hour before going. He also said he'd left his phone number in case there were any cancellations for this afternoons walk. So we went off to the entrance to the glacier, you can walk unguided so far up to it so we did this which took around an hour with beautiful sunshine on us this time. We actually couldn't get that close because part of the pathway had been closed off due to flooding. We went back to the van, did another short walk from five minutes up the road to another view point of the glacier which was just the same only higher up. Then we got in the van again and drove only 10 minutes to get to Lake Matheson where there was an hours walk around the lake which was really nice and and so peaceful seen as we were still quite early. About halfway around the lake there was a platform to look out and you could see perfectly reflected views of Mount Tasman and Mount Cook. It looked stunning, the water was so clear it was hard to tell what was real and what was reflection! When we got back to the van we had pretty much decided we'd spend this afternoon planning the final parts of the south and some of the north island and we need to look at America. James noticed though that he'd had a missed call, he called it back and we were told we could go on the walk this afternoon. It was midday by now and we had to be there at 1.30pm, so all plans scrapped we headed for the car park near the offices to get some lunch before going. After lunch we got sorted and got ourselves checked in, at 1.30pm the whole group were taken into a back room where we were kitted out with socks, hiking boots, rain coats, backpacks and crampons (spiky things to fasten onto your shoes to hold onto the ice). We put our crampons into our bag and headed out to thhe bus, we drove up the same entrance to the glacier as we drove earlier to do the walk. We got out of the bus and split up into three groups with three guides, our group was last to go and had two families one mum and dad with two boys and one mum and dad with three boys, a French couple and us. We set off on the walk, like we'd done earlier but went past there. The walkway was now open for unguided walks a lot further than we managed to get. To be fair if we'd have walked the whole lot earlier we would have probably wanted to skip the walk now. We walked for about an hour in total through two rock fall zones, a stream and a waterfall. It was an actual flowing waterfall which we had to make five steps through with gushing water on our boots and trousers. We were just about to get to the place to stop before getting on the ice when the guide pointed out the rock fall on the mountain on the other side of the valley. It was so cool but scary how much came down and how loud it was. Our guide wasn't worried just extremely excited! Then we got to the point where we put our crampons on and walked onto the ice. It was pretty easy to walk on the ice, you just had to stamp your feet as you walked. The guide had a pick axe, he said they are the only glacier guiding place to use this old method. He made holes we could walk on, plus there were some steps that had been cut out that we could use. The ice was amazing, so blue! Our guide was pointing out where they used to come onto the ice in different years when the ice has been at different stages. We were on the ice for around an hour having a look at the different holes and lakes in the ice. After coming off the ice it was shocking actually how much colder it was down there. We went back the way we came taking our crampons off and walking back over the waterfall. Back to the bus, back to the shop, dropped off everything that we had borrowed, then back to our van. We'd had a great time. We'd decided to get the drive out of the way past Franz Josef tonight. By the time we settled down our legs were killing after all the walking we've done today.