Two men who worked for Franz Josef Glacier Guide's (the company we were supposed to do our glacier hike with) came into the cafe I had a coffee in so we could use their nice toilets instead of the grotty public ones, and said something about its 50/50 whether our tour would happen. When we got to the office they said it had been cancelled because the cloud had shown no signs of lifting. We have to give the van back on Friday, and so it would be pushing it a bit to delay it to another day, so we decided we would claim a refund and go for a walk to see it instead. It was a bit drizzly whilst doing so, but we were a bit disappointed at how little ice you could see from our viewpoint. It was shocking to see the plaques with the different stages of what it looked like over the years. It was quite interesting to me how they had managed to date it as it related to my A-level biology. Basically, when a piece of land isn't very favourable for most plants, there would be a few pioneer species, which would make the land more favourable, and so it would become ideal for a next colony of plants, and this would continue. Once the ice melts, the land becomes exposed for this pioneering species to come in, and so they can tell where the glacier was by looking at where the different stages of this ecosystem are.

The first walk only took 20 minutes, so we did another one which was 25 minutes to see Peter's Pool, although the rain ruined the reflection of the mountains in the pool.

We drove back into the town so we could visit the hot pools, since this was going to be part of the glacier trip. For some reason it opened at 1, so we were outside talking to a family with identical twin girls, who were very cute. The mum and dad were cycling around New Zealand on a tandem, with the twins on a trailer. We got into the 40°C pool first, which meant going into the 36°C felt a bit cold, but then it got good going into the 38, and then the 40 one again. I was a bit annoyed by the fact that the overhead covers didn't seem to be that waterproof. By the end we were getting too hot so couldn't stay in any longer. Whilst waiting for Alice, I read a magazine where there was an article about a man who proposed by going to Hogs Breath and dressing up as the hogster.

We drove to Lake Matheson, which reflects Mt Cook, so that you get a perfect image of symmetry, but we didn't carry on to the 'classic viewpoint' as the viewpoint we did walk to wasn't very good due to the rain. We carried on to Haast, stopping at a salmon farm on the way, but were good and didn't buy anything. We cooked dinner, and then went to the cafe and convenience store, where the woman was very funny and called Haast 'very grim'.

Later on, in the campervan, me and Alice felt like we were being driven insane by the pesky sand flies- I was meditating because I felt like "ohming" was getting rid of the itch, and Alice claimed that forget Nelson Mandela being on death row (which is the book she's reading at the moment), in Alice's biography it would tell the story of a much worse form of torture. We didn't want to go to the toilet as we had spent so long trying to kill the current flies in our van, that when we'd go it'd let more in.