Today we set off towards Fox Glacier, and we'd planned a few stops along the way. These included Bruce Bay where the Tasman Sea crashed onto the coastline. Here we saw lots of white rocks at the edge of the road with messages written on them, left by people who'd passed by. One of our favourites was 'Live your dreams, don't dream your life'! After another stop (can't remember where!), we arrived at Fox and drove down the glacier access road to the car park at the bottom of the glacier. We decided not to walk up to it, as we'd be doing that on our hike tomorrow!

We then drove 2km down the road into Fox Township, a small village with cafes, a general store and lots of places to book hikes, helicopter flights and plane rides over the glaciers. We used the internet there and ate our lunch (back to cheese and crackers today!). We also booked our Fox Trot half-day hike for tomorrow and Laura chose (after some deliberation!) a new pair of sunglasses after breaking her last pair a few weeks ago - no more borrowing mine to drive in!

We then drove 6km out of town to a place called Lake Matheson. We walked for an hour and a half around the picturesque lake - on a clear day you can see Mount Cook, the highest mountain in Australasia, reflected in its waters…. unfortunately it was anything but clear - low grey cloud covered the top of the mountain and it had started to rain by the time we finished walking! The rain was heavy and lasted all night while we were at the campsite. It didn't help that the kitchen was at the opposite end of the site to the toilet so we had to run between the two!

We fell asleep to the sound of the rain hammering on our roof, and we hoped it would stop before our 9:35 walk in the morning!