Kel: We hadn't really thought about glaciers when we booked our NZ trip but we really really enjoyed our suprise explore. We drove in past Franz Josef glacier the night before and went for a bush walk to get a better view of it. It's meant to be the mighty one, but we were happy to carry on to Fox Glacier, it's smaller more accessible friend.

The camp site was just beautiful. We could see Mount Tasman from our van which was pretty special. We went for a wander around Lake Matheson the next morning and took about 500 pictures of the reflection of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman in the lake as it was a really sunny day. Then in the afternoon we went for a hike onto the glacier itself. We were given these massive policeman plod shoes (I fell 3 times in them) and literally plodded our way up a steep track on the side of the glacier. Our guide was really chatty and informative. The glacier moves forward about 1m a year and is one of the few around the world that is advancing, so there you go. We got our crampons on and headed out over the ice. We even got to go down a wee holey ice river thing (techical term) The guys on the trip with us were a bit weird so no massive bosom buddy moments but we had a really good time all the same. On our way back down we even heard a massive boom and a bit of ice falling so were pretty glad that happened before and not after : )

So every day is a school day and especially this one. We learnt about glaciers and I now know why fox glacier mints are called fox glacier mints.

That evening we got creative and made our first campervan version of stovies (non Scots - the best scottish dish really - better than haggis) except it was a NZ version with sweet potato and pikey corned beef rather than silverside roast, but it was soooo ace, and much better than the other groups dinners (mainly boiled eggs from what we could tell) We even did well to find a bottle of HP to go with it. I was saying to Matthew that must be the difference with gourmet 30 something travellers eh : )