Hi all,

Well, after Nelson, we spent a night in Greymouth. That's all I gotta say about that...! Nothing there, arrived in eve, left early next day.

To Franz Josef. You have all (I hope) seen the pics. Amazing. I've recently put some videos up, check those out, it gives you a much better idea of what it was like up there.

Franz Josef is one of 3 of the worlds glaciers that are in a sub tropical environment. NZ has one other, I forget where in the world the 3rd one is. We wanted to do the heli hike and had to wait and extra day, not originally part of our plan, to do it. The day we were gonna do the hike was cancelled due to extreme rain, it was pretty bad. There ain't a lot to do in this town even if the weather was good. It consists of about 3 pubs/cafes, about 2 souvenir shops, a supermarket and hostels/motels. That is it. So waiting around an extra day here did feel a bit like a waste of time.

BUT..the next morning..the weather was fab! And we got to do our heli hike. I've never been in a helicopter before, very cool, was up the front!! Then up to the glacier, wow, it's just so cool up there. I think that is the best way to see it. You can do half day and full day hikes but I just don't think they can appreciate like we did. It does cost but it's so worth it. We had these lovely shoes (new manolos) and you attach these crampon things and it just makes it so easy to walk around. It was great, I thought I'd be falling all over the place but these things just made it so easy to walk around and take in everything without slipping all over the place! It was one of the highlights so far for me!!

So that's all for now, I'm running out of time on the net. Hope everyone is well, thanks for the messages to those that have left some!

Take care to all, Cait x