What a day ! We have done so much and yet when you come to write about it, it seems so little on paper. Today started with a walk up Sentinal Rock to see Franz Josef glacier. The view was amazing and was our first glimpse of what a glacier looks like at its terminal face. It is far more imposing than you would think and a awful lot dirtier ! The walk to the terminal face was a lot longer and over a bumpy river bed so we decided we did not have time for that this morning.

After our walk we headed off to Fox Glacier as we were due to pick up a helipcopter ride from there. We arrived fairly early which was a good thing because Alex needed a wee wee, of course. We checked in for the flight and shortly after headed off to the helipad. Our flight was longer than expected as the ladies we were with requested to see Franz instead of Fox. The helicopter was expectionally loud although once we had the headphones on it was far better. Elizabeth sat on my lap through the first part of the flight and she had the better earphones as they had no radio calls through them. Alex had a normal set on and they were far too loud for her. The girls were not convinced by the flight to say the least. I was not too happy either until I got used to it.

The flight was spectacular although at times I felt we were very close to the rocks at the side of the valley and at times in cloud, close to the rocks. We flew over to Franz Josef and then up the glaciar before flying past the western face of mount Cook. What an amazing sight ! The glacier and the mountains were just stunning when seen from this angle, you could see the crevices shining blue in the white of the snow. After a while we had a snow landing and a chance to take photos. The girls enjoyed playing snowballs and Elizabeth decided to throw snowballs at the helicopter to make it go away, david and I were not so keen on this idea ! We headed back to the helicopter and had a fly down the Fox Glacier valley before we landed back in Fox village.

After the flight we headed out to Fox Glacier and had a picnic lunch in the carpark there before walking to the terminal face. It was meant to be an hour return but given both girls developed an obsession with stone and picking them up and we were walking over stiney ground this took rather longer. In the end we all managed the walk to the terminal face and the girls walked the vast majority of it themselves. It was really very impressive from the angle we saw it from and even more when you saw the size of the people in the valley below. We were really surprised to see so many people taking such risks and walking where it was clearly labelled as being dangerous. When we were there park of the glacier fell, the noise was incredible ! We had a number of comments about how well the girls were doing on the walk.

The way back was quicker and we were both surprised at how near the first viewpoint was to the carpark, it is amazing the length of time two babies can take to do so little !

We then drove back to Franz to our hotel although we popped into the village itself to get some money and supplies. We stopped at the information centre where Elizabeth through a humdinger of a temper tantrum, we resolved that only to find she did the same to me in the supermarket and did a runner out of the shop. The net result was Elizabeth continued her tantrum and went to bed when we got back, she tried to have dinner but failed. Sadly bed did not last long and she stayed awake way past her bedtime.