First thing in the morning we headed up to Fox glacier...where we were a little bit underwhelmed!!!! We think we have been spoiled with the glacier in Argentina, as this was nothing in comparison....we took a couple of pictures then made a speedy departure!!! Luckily Lake Matheson was a bit better! Here on a good day you can get a perfect reflection of the snow capped mountains while enjoying an hour walk around the lake. Luckily we had a good day so got to get some of the famous postcard shots! From there we headed down to Franz Joseph glacier to see if this one was any better....a shorter walk later we concluded that they were both fine but we would not be coming back to see them again!!! Still while we were passing we had to check them out!!!

There were more pressing matters to be sorted this day, which involved us getting to Hokitika to pick up our Wild Food Festival Tickets, starting that evening!!! So we gunned it up the road and made it there in plenty of time!!! What we hadn't realised was this was less a food festival and more a 2 day drinking festival!!!! How bad we can hear you all say!!!!....so we stocked up on our refreshments and did as the locals do!!!!...got pissed in a field!!! We headed into the concert that night, but the main event was Sat!

So Sat morning came...and we soon realised that not only was this a piss up, but it was primarily a fancy dress party!!! Almost everyone in the campsite had made the effort....which made for great people watching!! We did what we could to join in...drinking away!!! We headed into the arena to check out the wild foods. There wasn't as many as we thought that there would be....we did sample some lovely rhubarb Champaign, some shell duck salami and other game birds, smoked trout, venison pita and bbq ribs....on the other end of the scale we had some HuHu bugs....YUK!!!! The other delights that we passed on were mountain oysters (i.e. lambs testicles), chocolate covered cow eyeballs and some weta grubs!!!! So all in all not that wild...A highlight was also the airplane display that we were lucky enough to see, caught some of the tricks on video.

The evening event was actually a separate ticket, which we didn't know until the day and we weren't going to pay extra for!!! We were a little disappointed at first but what we hadn't counted on was the Kiwi field partying ability!!! There was a DJ with speakers and flashing lights using an ipod on top of a van in the middle of the campsite pumping out the choons!!!People we dancing madly all around...it was epic!!!

The last couple of days in the south island were spent putting in the hard miles to get up to Picton. Luckily there was some beautiful driving along the way!! Highlights include the west coast and the pancake rocks, and the Queen Charlotte Drive.