We slept well last night and got up and off early, it had pretty much rained on and off all night. Sometimes the rain was extremely heavy with thunder and lightning. This was the weather we had all the way on the drive to Fox Glacier. Apart from the added extra strong wind and hailstones! We pulled up in the car park in the town of Fox Glacier and had a good five minutes of giant rain, thunder and lightning, the whole van rumbled. Once the rain seemed to calm down a little we went over to the petrol station to ask whether they do LPG gas refills, the petrol station is under construction so we weren't sure. We asked but no such luck. Next we went to find a cafe for a hot drink, we sat and had a coffee, reviewing our options. We asked the woman at the cafe if there was anywhere else that did gas refills she said not until you get to Franz Josef 20km up the road. So we decided to head for there in the hope to find gas with the rain still hammering down. We started on the journey to Franz Josef, the woman was right it was only 20km but she forgot to mention that the road was full of hills and corners the whole way there. Anyway we got there, filled up a little with diesel to find out they don't do gas refills. We parked down a side road and got some sandwiches for lunch. Then for some reason James tried the gas, it worked. What a pair of silly b*****s we'd turned it the wrong way at some point so it's not been going the right way, idiots! So after we huffed and puffed at ourselves for some time we nipped to the supermarket then looked at all of the brochures for the glaciers to see what we want to do here. We decided on a half day walk at Fox Glacier, James rang to check they would have footwear big enouugh for him as they provide all the kit. They said they did have them big enough. Since we were going to have a guided walk on Fox Glacier we thought we'd take a look at Franz Josef. There is a half hour round trip walk to the bottom of it. We got to the car park and it was still raining a little. At a quiet patch we decided to go for it with ponchos in our pockets. It wasn't long before we were putting them on! The walk started through forest then came out onto loads of rocks and lakes where there was a path to follow. The rain came down quite hard at some points but it was behind us so it wasn't so bad. We got to the point at which we couldn't go any further and saw the glacier, it was huge and impressive looking. Unfortunately the weather hadn't improved so we didn't stick around, we headed back. The walk back was less fun as the rain was in our faces. We got back to the van and had to have full changes and our trainers soaked through, James was now driving in just socks. So we drove back to Fox Glacier, we found a place we could get an electric plug in for the night and do some laundry and now dry our shoes and clothes from today, we got parked up and got some organising done. I had to nip to the pub up the road in my pyjama bottoms and flip flops at one point to get more change for the dryer but other than that the night was fine. We planned to get up early for the 8.30am walk, turn up at 8.00am and hopefully be able to go.