Fox glacier Arrived at the holiday park bout 3 30, not too far out of the town, well village really. A nice room, all good. The scenery all around was stunning, lush green mountains. I took a walk into the village bout ten mins away, Booked up for the glacier trip for the next day, checked out the village, which took a grand total of about 5 seconds. Marcel arrived arrived bout half seven, so good to see him again, had only been 2 n half weeks but seemed like longer> found him wandering round out side he’d managed to get dropped around the back so think we both kept missing each other!!! We walked into town, with much moaning from himself as walking isn’t his favourite pastime plus it was quite cold, although to me didn’t seem too bad when you come from Chile its bit different. We decided on the pub/café/bar/restaurant of the town for something to eat. It was really nice food and wine and we talked lots catching up on everything. Next day we had brunch in the same place, which was really nice again, though they managed to take half an hour to make a hot choc which then wasn’t hot!!! We had goose around the minimal amount of shops then headed for our trip. We got kitted out with our socks and boots and handed some crampons, which I was very dubious about, I was hoping for a few more spikes to hold me!!!! We got on the stunning 1960s looking coach and headed to the glacier, it only took bout 10mins. We arrived in a car park near the bottom( terminal face ) of the glacier. Then for the walk up…I was waiting for the moaning to begin from you know who, but he was very good. It was a bit of a trek up, with 500 steps to climb, and very steep also some parts literally on the cliff edge holding onto the chain. Though the view up the  valley of the glacier were amazing. I was so surprised at the colour and texture of it, I didn’t really know what to expect. In some parts the ice was a stunning turquoise blue colour and the ice came up in big peaks. Eventually we got to the ice, donned our crampons!! scary stuff and grabbed a walking pole which was basically a tent poll from a patrol tent!!! And off we set, steps had been carved out in the glacier and our guide Troy( I’m not joking) hacked away at parts of the ice to make more steps with his pick axe. It was all good to start with felt ok on my feet and was in awe of the amazing sights around me. But as we got further onto the ice he took us up small crevices and onto little pieces of ice i really didn’t feel safe on, having short legs didn’t help either I didn’t feel very sturdy at all trying to step up huge steps of ice and almost fell a couple times. Lucky I had the big strong man with me to give me a hand (plus he had been to Antarctica before so was ok with the ice). There were so many stunning natural crevices/carvings in the ice. We walked (well I stumbled around) on the ice for bout an hour, though an amazing experience I was glad to be back on tera firma again. Back at the centre we got our lovely certificates popped to ‘the’ shop for some grub then strolled home, was bout 7ish by then anyhow. I left Marcel to the cooking as he’s good at that anyway. Stupidly I hadn’t realised that offcourse it’s a camp kitchen so has nothing bar the sink and oven and offcourse our crockery and cutlery had been stolen in oz and Sam a had the tranchea with the pots and pans. So Marcel had already stolen/borrowed somebody elses pans without even realising, how embarrassed did I feel!! Then we had to come up with some sort of plates…I wasn’t gonna steal anymore peoples stuff!!! After suggesting we ate from my plastic folder; similar to the pop together crockery!!! But Marcel wasn’t having any of it. I did my beggar bit and pleaded with reception and managed to cadge a couple plates and we found some plastic cutlery lying around. All was good and many laughs were had.

Next morn up early for the bus to Greymouth.