Clare writes:
I don't often use the word 'awesome' - unless I'm taking the piss out of the yoof of today and their general overuse of the word - BUT... the glaciers of New Zealand are truly awesome, and the best thing about them is you can get really up close and personal. We did the walks to both Franz Josef and Fox glacier terminals (ie the end bits) and they were pretty impressive. But then we went up in a helicopter and spent half a day walking around on Fox Glacier and wow... I mean WOW! The flight was white-knuckle and we landed on a flat bit where the mass of ice slows down at a corner (it's 300 metres thick at this point... that's 300 yards, mum!) and is a bit flatter. They gave us crampons for our boots and we set out to explore compression arches, crevasses and blue blue pools of icy water that went deep into the glacier. It;s one of the faster moving in the world, with parts of it advancing up to 5-6 metres a day - ten times faster than Alpine glaciers. There is a massive amount of rainfall up -alley (Mount Cook) then a hugely steep descent into sub-tropical rainforest., making it (in the words of our guide) "The racing car of glaciers... cool!"
It was an amazing experience - I was scared I would be scared, but it was just so fab to be up there - and I loved my first time in a helicopter.
Later (and Sheila took as many pics of this as the glacier) we walked through unique rainforest dripping with briophytes, mosses, liverworts etc - the sort of things she gets excited about - to a viewpoint above the glacier at the height it used to reached in the 1800's - one of the lovliest walks I've done.
Wow, wow, wow.