Day 1

After a couple of hours drive on the bus we arrived at Franz Josef. As soon as we arrivd there we went straight to the Glaicier's Guides office to pay for our Full Day Hike. We were all really excited for doing it the next day! After paying we got to our hotel which was called Rainforest Retreat - it was a really nice place, nice and chilled out, we even had a big hotyub there!! :-) After loking in the shops in town that night me and Loz cooked Spagetti Bolenese for everyone (10people), which i might add was very nice and then we just headed to the bar to have a soft drink with Lauren and the other bus drivers who were having a night out! We all decided to have a quiet night as we had a tough 8hour walk the next day!! Early night to bed!

Day 2

So we got up at 7am ready for a long walk. We headed down to the shop where here we got kitted up with boots, crampons, raincoats etc. We looked the part! We then started our 2k treak through rainforest which was great, saw waterfalls had to climb ladders and we had to go really close to the edge of very high mountain sides…it was quite scary. After what felt like for hours we then got to the bottem of the glaicer where we ahd to ut on our crampons. The glacier was tricky to walk on at first, we had to stomp around so that our spikes dug into the ice but we soon got the hang of it. After we climbed up loads of steps that were cut out from the following group it started to get more interesting we went in loads of little caves and walked through some right tight spaces. We learnt loads of differnt ways of how to walk in our spikes, it was really intresting. When we got higher up through the Glacier we saw the most amazing views, it was incrediable, needlas to say we got loads of photos!! Near to the end of the walk suprise suprise Loz feel over and cut her knee.....it was quite funny really bless her we were running doqn this hill and she couldnt stop running so instead she fell over!! To be fair the ice was reallt sharp!!

Josh out tour guide, bless him got loads of stick that day off us. He had a group of girls......and to be fair we didn't stop moaning at him until we got lunch!! To be fair though everytime we asked him he was like it will only be another 15mins down and he must have said that about 10times!! Eventually we stopped for lunch with another group...we sat on the ice and made our sandwiches, it was cool! Later on in our journey we realised Josh was only 19......we felt a little gulity about some comments ad all the stick we gave him!!

After walking 5hours on the ice we were so tired.....the only thing was we had another 40min walk through the rainforest again to get back. It was really weird walking without the spikes on our feet. I can safely say this is up there with one of the best days i have had......it was so much fun! After our long day we all decided to get back to the hotel and head striaght fot the Hot Tub....it was lovely relaxing. After relaxing we went for a couple of drinks in our bar and had an early night ready for Wanaka the next day!