Day 3 Greymouth-Franz Josef Glacier

The following day I caught the right bus that left at 7.30am heading for the Glaciers. We stopped in a little town famous for it's Greenstone and watched them making jewellery while having some breakfast. Another hour up the road we stopped at Ross which is a gold mining town and we panned for gold. No substantial sized nuggets in my pan though. Ross was a very small village with a large supply of gold beneath it, however the gold mining company were unable to get permission to move the locals from their houses that sat on the gold! We got back on the bus and drove further down the west coast passing many attractions including the house of an ex deer jumper. This man would would wrestle deer to the ground by jumping out of a helicopter so that they were cauht alive and could be bred in farms. Not suprisingly, many people died doing this form of hunting but the practice continued as each deer would be worth around $1000! Anyway he later retired and opened up a pie shop selling the award winning possum pie. He lived alone except for one pet, a rather agressive boer!! We arrived at the Franz Josef glacier at lunch time and I intended to go on the helihike where you are dropped on top of the glacier and then proceed to do a half day hike. However it was too cloudy and so our group got kitted out for a 6 hour hike with crampons and pic axes!! It was quite an experience to actually walk on a glacier, hiking close to huge crevasses that you would through a stone down and never hear hit the bottom. Our guide cut out steps with his axe as we went to make it easier for us to walk on. The glacier was spectacular, it was so vast and the colours ranged from pure white to the deepest blue. By the end of the hike we were all very cold and extremely tired so we retreated back to the hostel and I got in the hot tub to rest my weary muscles.