Everyone piled onto the bus with sore heads after the Poo Party. The pain was further increased when the driver announced to everyone that I had won the best costume prize for helping with the dishes, after that my headache didn’t seem too bad. Our first stop of the day was at Pukekura to visit Bushman Pete’s Cafe and Museum. Here we got to see example of the West Coast’s wildlife and then watched a documentary on how deer used to be hunted in the area. I then filled the hole in my stomach with a delicious Possum Pie. We arrived in Franz Josef late afternoon and prepared ourselves for the glacier hike the next day.

The Franz Josef glacier is one of the fastest moving in the world, moving on average 1m per day and sometimes up to 5m per day, 10 times faster than the Swiss Alp’s glaciers. It is also one of the 3 glaciers in the world that descends from 2500m to rainforests just above sea level. Maori legend tells that the glacier was formed when a girl lost her lover and the river of tears she cried froze in the cold temperature.

We arrived at the foot of the glacier at 10:30am and I was blown away immediately by the sight of the sheet of ice creeping menacingly through the valley. We split into smaller groups, me, James and James (the prevy priests) jumped into the first group because that was where the Swedish girl with the ridiculously tight shorts was and set out towards the ice. The rest of the day was a completely fantastic experience. We explored the glacier, climbing higher and higher, finding ledges to scale and caves to scramble through and crevasses to squeeze through, it was a once in a lifetime event. Our guide cut steps and paths into the ice and some of the areas were quite tough to conquer; needing the help of ropes and the ‘Franz Shuffle’ to overcome them. We stopped off for lunch at the halfway point of the glacier and even got to refill our water bottles with the cool glacial ice melt, it was awesome. Once the hike was over we returned to the hostel and popped over to the Hot Pools to relax the leg muscles that had been hard at work all day. What followed was a night of drinking that is almost too painful to relive, not as painful however as the hangover the next day!