This morning we woke up and checked the weather outside…no rain! Only the third time we've had to set our alarm clock since we started travelling too!

We headed to Fox Glacier guiding centre after breakfast to check in for our walk, and had a look around the shop while we were waiting. We overheard the guides behind the desk saying that the heli-hike for the morning had just been cancelled due to the stormy winds, so we might have a few extra people joining our walk! There were 16 of us in total in the end, and we were shown through to get our boots, rain jackets, gloves, hats and crampons - I'd never seen these before, they looked like some sort of medieval torture device but apparently they would stop us falling over on the ice! Our guides for the day, Geoff and Jorja (who hadn't been guiding long - she was only 20!) introduced themselves and we set off on the bus to the glacier car park.

From there, we walked for about an hour towards the terminal face of the glacier. There were signs everywhere warning people to stay on the track and not go past the barriers without a guide - people died in 2009 when they crossed the barrier to touch the glacier and part of it collapsed on top of them! Luckily, we had our guides, so we crossed the barrier and headed up the Glacier track at the side of the glacier. From our first stop we could see where an opening in the ice had recently collapsed, leaving behind broken blue ice - the signs weren't lying!

Eventually we made it to the ice and we were shown how to put on our crampons - small spikes that attached to the bottom of our boots to help us walk on the hard, compacted ice. The guide told us that the glacier isn't frozen water like an ice cube - it's compacted snow, which falls at the top of the mountain and gradually works its way down the valley. At the moment, the glacier is retreating and we could see the place it had reached at the end of its last advancement in 2008. It's constantly changing, even sometimes between morning and afternoon tours!

The guides led the way, cutting out a path for us with their ice axes. We stopped several times during the morning to look at a few features, including a hole with water running through it that was big enough to crawl into for a photo, a chance to drink pure glacier water running down the ice and a walk into a crevasse, with sheer ice walls on both sides of you and only enough room to walk down in single file!

The whole experience was fascinating and good fun - a one-off that we won't get to do anywhere else, so it was well worth it!

By the time we had made our way back down the glacier and back to the bus, we were all exhausted! We decided to eat in the Hobnail Café attached to the Glacier Guiding centre at lunchtime - ham quiche and a massive veggie jacket potato made a welcome change from cheese and crackers!

After a quick internet stop, we drove North to a nearby DOC site which was quite busy with vans, and spent the rest of the day there reading and relaxing. One of the best days in New Zealand - everyone should do it once!