We have been in Franz Josef now for three days and it is a tiny little place surrounded by mountains covered in snow!

We arrived in the afternoon and got to our hostel and after a little mix up which was caused by some ass helping himself to our room the nice lady put us in the motel for the same price...bargain! we even have a bathroom, kitchen, tv and the best bit...an electric blanket!!

We didn't do too much the day we arrived, got some food and booked ourselves in for our glacier hike but that was about it. Yesterday was a bit more exciting as we went for a walk to the glacier we would be climbing the next day. Well, actually several walks! The first was round a random little track through a rainforest which was very pretty but seemed to go on forever! It was leading us to a place called Peter's Pool which we were told was great because you could get great views of the glacier reflecting in the water. Well, it was reflecting yes but it was more of a puddle than a pool! Bless the kiwis, their a wee bit prone to exaggeration!

Next was up a massive hill to a view point over the glacier which was pretty amazing as neither of us had an idea how big the thing was gonna be. We read lots of stuff about it and then decided to go for a walk up to the glacier face as it didn't seem that far away and the woman in the booking office had scared me by telling us it was the steepest it had ever been since the company started! Lovely!

As I said, the thing didn't look that far away so we decided to walk to it. It was bloody miles! Well not miles but nearly! Every time we thought we were near it, it was still ages away! Anyway, we eventually reached it and the thing was HUGE! 16kms! And the front of it was just like a massive wall! Amazing!

After gawking at it for a while we headed back across the valley and saw five wild parrots which were gorgeous, all green with red bits so we stopped to take some photos which is when we ran into the STUPIDEST English couple in the world. The wench decided to give the parrots some bread which was a lovely idea only it was rock hard and she threw it at their heads! The parrots flew away and the conversation went something like this, "Oh, i wonder why they're flying away", bloke - " i don't know, let me throw some" (once again at their heads), both - "they must not be as friendly as the other parrots, maybe they're shy"!...You throwing rock hard bread at their heads, would you not move if someone was trying to brain you with a loaf?!!!

Anyway, after listening to dumb and dumber and getting our photos we headed back to the hostel for some yummy tea and then curled up in our nice electric blanketed warmed beds!!!

Today was quite an early start as we had to be at the glacier office at 8am. We got all kitted our in our beautiful boots and coats and off into the bus we went. We arrived in the car park and got out to do the same valley walk up to the glacier as we had done yesterday and continued a bit further to the foot of the beast! Then was the fun bit, putting our crampons on and climbing over rocks in them. You know the whole nails on a chalkboard thing well picture twenty people doing it at once! Not nice!

We got to the ice and reached the steps the guides had made with their axes which we soon realised they were very fond of! As for the steepness, the girl in the office wasn't wrong and it really didn't help that the steps were made for giants so it was a bit of a struggle but as the guide pointed out, it's not my fault I'm "vertically challenged" (lovely guy!). It took about thirty minutes to get to a flatter bit, climbing steps and bridges over gorge's and it was then that we could really start appreciating what we were doing! The thing was fantastic, all blue ice with giant crevasses and caves. We were up there for six hours and it was probably one of the most bizarre but best things ever!

The first thing we did was crawl through an ice tunnel which was pretty small and followed by a ravine, which was a bit of a tight squeeze especially for Chris who was in our group! He got his shoulders wedged and needed a push to get out! We spent the rest of the day crawling through cracks, going through more caves and the best bit was the tunnel which we had to slide down and end up in a crevasse and squeeze our way through! We just clambered around for hours jumping over cracks and going over bridges. I was very impressed with myself for not being afraid of how high up we were on some of the bridges!!!! The only scary bit was the tiny ledge we had to walk across on the way back down because the way we had gone up had collapsed while we were further up the ice!

The whole day was brilliant and the six hours flew by!

Anyways, we were a little cold to say the least when we got back so we got ourselves packed and went to get some tea and had a chat with a few very strange Americans before curling up in bed to try and get some feeling back in our toes!!!!!

Unfortunately we leave tomorrow but it's not so bad because we're going to Wanaka which is supposed to be fantastic and we get to do more snowboarding!!!!