l left Mount Cook this morning for the painful 6 hour drive onto the West Coast to see the Fox and Frans Joseph Glaciers. I say the drive is painful beacause its so long and at the end , you end up on the other side of mount cook about 15kms from where you started "as the crow flies"

The landscape changes are amazing, and the West Coast gets a huge amount of rain and so the vegitation is quasi tropical.

Really lucky with the weather as it was beautiful sunshine, compared to it raining more days than it doesnt, even in the summer.

The glaciers are close to each other being about 15kms apart, so I managed to see them both in one day. Only a 20 min hike from the car park to the Glacier terminal (thats techinical speak for the front!). Amazing to see, as you stood their 30mins, you could see things moving and I witnessed a small ice fall. Got some of it on video, but not sure how its come out.

S pent the night in Frans Joseph, which is a little town built up totally on the tourism around the glacier. A quite place apart from one backpacking bar/club, which I went to for something to eat early in the evening and stumbled out at 2am!!

Spent a few hours playing pool, and either I get better with alcohol, or allt he others in that evening were crap as I won 8 games on the trot!