Our drive up to Wanaka was put at a brief halt as we had to dodge a few herds of cows that were in the middle of road! once we finally made it we headed for puzzling world, this place sounded a bit bizarre but turned out to be really cool. we first went into the illusion room which was a combination of weird puzzles, holograms and of course, illusions. Shelly walked into a room where she got the feeling someone was watching her, as it turned out everyone was.....as you walked around the room all the faces seemed to follow you! A bit weirded out she headed in the hunt of Richard but found him abit looking wonky....about 45 degrees wonky to be precise. It was the weirdest room where balls rolled uphill and you could slide up hill and never stand straight...after a good few mins playing about we both decided we felt slightly sick and it was time to get out of there, our next task was the maze! After a few initial teething problems and many a step in the wrong direction we made it out and headed for 'have a shot'. We decided on clay bird shooting and got kitted up, ear protectors on (good job it was bloody loud), protective goggles (at the end of the day shelly had a gun, no goggles were going to help that!) and bullets in hand! Unfortunately after 20 round each we managed to only hit one clay bird.....and the winner was Shelly! Yey! So with Richards bottom lip dragging on the floor we hit 50 balls at the driving range before heading to Fox Glacier.

Unfortunately we got to fox to find out that fridge size peices of ice had been falling down from the glacier so therefore it was shut! Luckily it is the smaller of the two glaciers we wanted to see so we cut our losses and headed for Gillespies Beach dodging the sheep along the route! We arrived at Franz Josef glacier the following day and arranged a mammoth day for the day that followed. It all started with us being awoken by helicopters that sounded like they we were landing on our campervan roof as we had managed to camp next to a helicopter landing pad unknowingly! A scenic helicopter ride was our first activity of the day over what we thought would just be Franz Josef, however when we arrived we were told we had a free upgrade to a longer flight which took it over Fox glacier and Franz...so we'd get to see fox after all! The helicopter was absolutely unforgetable, we flew out over fox and took in all the amazing sights along the way and then came over the bigger and even more spectacular Franz Josef glacier. We landed right on the top of Franz and all jumped out to play on the snow. It was an amazing sight, there were cracks in the snow so deep you couldnt even see the bottom. After many a photo and snowball we all climbed back on board to fly 'zig zagging' down the mouth of the glacier all the way back to the town.

Just after lunch we checked in for our glacier hike and got suited and booted in huge boots, trampons (shoe spikes) and rain jackets (what a joke, it was the hottest day by far!. So in all our gear wearing only shorts in the gorgeous sun we started our climb. It was wicked as we climbed on the glacier and started climbing up the first crack in the snow. As we climbed we could see parts where it was melting and carving huge ice caves in the glacier down to the river at the bottom. After about an hour and a half we reached roughly half way up the mouth of the glacier and stopped to fill our bottles with ice cold glacier water before starting our decent! We reached the bottom with sunburn and huge blisters for the massive boots but it was the most amazing experience ever.

To finish the day off we headed to the glacial hot pools...they were set amongst the rain forest with huge canopy above and were the perfect way to finish the day.