From Queenstown we drove an hour or so north to Wanaka, a small town with a very pretty lake, which is huge and lined with bright green willow trees. We had a pub lunch in Wanaka and spent the afternoon walking around the lake. In the evening we found a great spot to park up with fantastic views over-looking the lake.

The next morning we woke up to a wonderful sunrise and ate our cornflakes by the side of the river, which was very still and calm and constantly changing colour as the sun got higher in the sky. We packed up the van and got back on the road, we had a long drive ahead of us as we had to get to Franz Josef that night ready for our glacier hike the next morning. Although the drive was long and took up most of the day it was one of the more spectacular drives we did with gorgeous scenery of mountains and lakes. We stopped quite a few times for photos. By late afternoon we had made it to Lake Matheson, just outside of Fox Glacier. Lake Matheson is well know for its mirror reflections and on a clear day Mt Cook can be seen reflected in its surface. We decided it would be good to see the lake and Mt cook from the other side. So we parked up and set of on the walk around the lake, as it was 4pm we didn't have much time before dark so it was quite a fast paced walk. The reflections in the lake were amazing and copied the surroundings perfectly. Just as we reached the far side of the lake the clouds parted and the top of Mount Cook came into view along with a little rainbow....prefect. We finished off our walk and got back to the camper just as it was going dark. We continued our drive for another hour or so and found a quite layby to park in just outside of Franz Josef town.

The next morning we were up early and drove around to the glacier hike check in desk. As we had never seen a glacier before let alone walk on one we had no idea what to expect. At the desk we were given snow trousers, a jacket, large walking boots and crampons to attach to the boots. We were given instructions on safety and shown how to attach the crampons to our boots. We followed our guide over to a helicopter pad and waited for our helicopter. Ben and I were loaded into the helicopter with 4 other people, the doors were shut and we slowly raised off the ground and then sped off towards the glacier. As the glacier came into view we were stunned by how big it was but we didn't appreciate just how big until we could see other people already on the glacier who looked like tiny ants below us. Once landed, we carefully climbed out and shuffled along the ice. We were instructed to put our crampons on that would allow us to walk on the ice. They did allow us to walk on the ice but it was very stange. We spent the next 3 hours walking up and down the glacier with huge ice formations above and below us. Huge ice walls towered above, large cracks dissappeared deep into the ice below us and massive waterfalls were flowing off the mountains to either side of us. It was amazing! At one point we were taken through a very narrow gap of ice, we had to walk sideways with 2 huge walls of ice pressing in on either side of us. It was a little scary at first but a great feeling once we had made it through to the other side. We climbed quite high up on the glacier before we made our descent back down to the helicopter. We were flown back down to the landing pad feeling tired and overwhelmed by what we had just done.

We spent the afternoon warming up in the Franz Josef hotpools and finished the day off with food and drinks in a local pub.

The following day we spent the morning in Franz Josef before continuing the drive up the west coast to Greymouth. We stopped briefly at Greymouth and then continued on. We spent the rest of the day driving and when it started to go dark we found a grassy area over looking the sea to park up in.