Once we arrived in Greymouth we had a long-ish car journey down to Franz Josef. By the time we arrived and had checked in to our accommodation it was dinner. So we went down to one of the local restaurants for a bite to eat and glass of wine. We had to be up early the next day for a helicopter ride over the glaciers but the weather wasn't looking too great...

The next morning we called the company we were meant to be flying with and they told us to come down to the office at Fox Glacier. When we arrived they explained that we couldn't go up now but it might clear in a couple of hours so to go back then. So in the meantime we went for a walk around Lake Matheson which was beautiful. However the rain had started to begin so our hopes of going up in the helicopter were declining. When we got back to the office, we were told we could either wait longer and see if it gets better but we decided that it probably wasn't going to so we didn't want to waste the rest of the day. We headed back to the actual Franz Josef Glacier and went for a walk up to it. Not quite the same as landing on it but hey ho! It was surprising how much the glacier had moved over the years, it had carved out a huge valley in the rock! I never knew glacier ice was so powerful and destructive. It was a fairly long walk and by the time we got back we were soaked from the rain! We headed back into town and decided to go to the Hot Pools to relax and warm up. And we did just that. They were only small but it was lovely to spend some time there. Once we had freshened up at the hotel, we headed out to dinner at an Asian restaurant which specialised in a variety of Asian style meals. I had a Thai red curry which was yummy.