As far as I can remember my last blog entry finished with us leaving Wanaka for Franz Josef, so I will carry on from there. The drive to the village took about 5 hours all together, prehaps even a bit more, so it was one of the longer drives we have done here. It was a nice one though because the route took us through two national parks and had some great views. The only downside to this was, because we were in national parks the whole time, we didn't have any radio signal and we only have one CD, which gets a bit boring once you have listened to it 10 times in a row! Unfortunately Justin still preferred this to me singing. We tried to get this part of the journey done as soon as possible as the West Coast is notoriously bad to drive in, but luckily the weather was nice. At this point anyway! The first park we drove through along route 6 was Mount Aspiring National Park, which had some nice bits especially along the edges of Lake Wanaka. We stopped at one point to stretch our legs and walk to a waterfall, but I can't remember what is was called. I should try and keep more up to date with my blogs and then I wouldn't have problems remembering all the details! After that, as we drove further north up towards the glaciers, we made another stop just off the road from the Fox Glacier after stopping for petrol, to Lake Matherson. This is also know as reflection lake, and apparantly gives great views of Mount Cook reflected in the water if you walk around to the far side. Neither of us could be bothered to do this, but the side we did see was still really pretty. By that point we weren't far away from our destination and we drove straight to the township of Franz Josef to find ourselves a campsite. It was actually a really nice one, and even had a free spa we could use, but we were so tired we just ate dinner and watched TV. We both had to be up early as we had booked to do a glacier walk the following morning, and we were both very excited about it.

We had be at the office for the glacier walk in the village by 8.30 the next morning. We had booked to do a half day glacier walk, which would still give us 2 hours on the ice itself, and were both really looking forward to it. Justin was a bit apprehensive because of the problems with his hip are made worse by the cold, but after speaking with a couple of people there he decided he would be fine to do it. The company we used were really good, and gave us the use of walking boots, socks, hats and gloves and a nice big waterproof jacket. They also had waterproof trousers we could have, which for some reason we didn't take. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake! Once everyone had gotten these on we were ready to go. We were taken by coach 10 minutes up the road to the entrance of the walk towards the glacier. From here it was still almost an hours walk up to the face of the ice. It was weird because it didn't look that far at first, but the more we walked it still never got much closer. We walked through a bit of rainforest track first before we came out in the valley where the glacier had been hundreds of years ago. It had a bit of a stream running through it which we had to walk through a couple of times, but apart from that was just covered in rocks. This is what made the walk so long because they were hard to walk over quickly. Despite the cold weather I was getting hot and bothered by this point and had to take a couple of layers off.We eventually reached the front of the glacier, and by this point it had started to spit with rain a bit but was still quite nice. We had to stop and have a break for a few moments, and we also had to strap the crampons they had given us onto our boots to help us grip the ice when we were walking over it. Once that was done up we went!

The beginning of the glacier didn't look that nice from far away as it was covered in the same rocks that were on the valley floor, but once you were on it even this bit was impressive. The guides had carved steep steps into the ice for us to walk up in most places, and in some places had rope up for us to use for balance. The first part of the walk up one of the steepest parts of the ice was the hardest, and after that the walk wasn't too much hard work. Once we had passed all the rocks it was much easier. The crampons on our boats obviously helped a lot. The further up the ice we walked the more amazing it was to see. It was cold, but I didn't pay too much attention to that yet because I was concentrating on not falling over most of the time. The whole walk was great, and like I said we were on there for a couple of hours. At one point we even got to walk through some ice caves which was brilliant. The ice was also really blue in places, and we saw some creaveses and you could also see the water running inside it in some places. It was such a brillaint thing to see and we both really enjoyed it! I couldn't take as many pictures as I would have liked though as by this point the rain had gotten heavier and I didn't want to have to buy another camera. It wasn't really surprising though as the west coast of New Zealand is apparantly the third rainiest place in the world. It held out for a while but started to get heavier just as we were leaving the ice for the walk back to the coach. By this point it was really bad, and we were both soaked through. This wasn't good as I was wearing every bit of warm clothing I owned. We hadn't been able to wear jeans though for that reason. I was starting to get really cold too as I was so wet, but soon enough we were back at the coach and were taken back to the office to get changed. I said to Justin as we walked back through the rainforest to the coach that it was strange that all the times we have been in the rainforest since we came away, this was the first time it had actually rained while we were there. I was still freezing when we got back but they gave us some hot chocolate which was nice and helped a bit. We had checked out of the campsite and had parked on the road, so we had to run through the rain and get changed in the back of the van before we could get on our way. Luckily Justin had a spare jumper I could wear. I wasn't very happy by this point, but had still had a brilliant morning!

We drove through the rain for a couple more hours until we came to a place called Hokitika where we decided to stop for the night. The rain had just gotten worse and worse and as we were by the coast the wind was so strong it was hard to drive the van in a straight line. We chose the campsite that was furthest away from the sea as we thought it would be warmer, but it turned out to be a bit of a rubbish place. There wasn't really loads to do in the town either so we just had an early night. It carried on raining hard all through the night, and was still going the next morning when we woke up so we decided to just leave and carry on driving back to Christchursch where hopefully it would be a bit nicer!