Hi to you all

Well we are very soggy wet pair at the moment, but i'll tell you about that later!

Thursday 28th Feb

We had a nice drive to Franz Josef Glacier on Thursday, stopping at a few places along the way and passing through Fox Glacier. We pitched our tent just before the rain started on Thursday night but managed to sleep in and there were not leaks atall!

Friday 29th Feb

We got mega early and got down to the ice centre for 8:15 to get kitted up with waterproof trousers, jackets, hats, gloves, bum bag, hiking boots & cram-ons (ice pick things for your boots) and after all that we were ready for our climb of Franz Josef Glacier. We started our walk and had to walk through the forest and across rivers for an hour ( with laggers falling behind so we had to hang about for ages!!) but we got to the foot of the Glacier and you could see how huge it is, we split into 3 groups of 1. Super confident ice climbers and fit, 2. Pretty confident and 3. the lagger behinders! We thought we'd be brave and go in group 1 coz we didn't want to end up in group 3!

Our guide had to cut out steps from the ice with his pick axe along the way as the glacier is just so steep and it is very hard work climbing on ice! W saw amazing deep crevises, ice caves and passages that we had to squeeze though and me being clumsy i was the only 1 in the group 2 nearly lose my legs!! Well the ice gave way and my leg fell down a huge gap - twice!! You should have seem me scrape myself out so fast so we could move to another bit of ice! The Glacier is amazing and the ice is so blue, we walked solidly for 8 hours with 15mins stop for our lunch, standing up on a steep hill!! It started rainy and it was pretty freezing but it all added to the fun!!

We got back to town at 5 and went for a shower and came back for beer, hot chocolate and chips!! But then.............the rain started and it rained...........we cooked tea and it was still raining...................we met a couple from Bournemouth and sat with them in the TV room of our campsite until midnight...............and the rain was worse than ever!!! Us and the Bournemouth coupl are the only people in the whole camp site that have tents!

Iain went to investigate the tents and found a couple of puddles and our mats were wet so our only option was the car!! So we put the seat backs down and slept in the car for the night! We got up this morning and our tent is absolutely flooded and so are the roads so all there is to do is come to the internet cafe, have a beer, more hot choc and eat!!! We are going to have to spend tonight sleeping in the car too as it has not stopped raining now for over 15 hours and its forecast to carry on! Tomorrow morning we're driving to Greymouth and we have no more camping left now on the South Island so we'll pop our tent in the tumble dryer and be on our merry way!

On Monday we're spending the day doing Jade & Bone carving so we'll see how our necklaces turn out!

You can all think of us in a cramp little car with all our belongings while you are tucked up in a nice warm bed!!

Cheerio,

C & I xx