The drive from lake wanaka to Franz Josef was about 5 hours. It was in a mini bus on winding roads through the mountains. Again, some very good views. The driver was crazy, he seemed to be in a rush, he was as bad as the drivers in Laos on the mountains.
The bus stopped at a place called Fox glacier to let people off. Cj and i looked at each and thought 'sh*t'. we stopped right outside the Guided Fox company building where we where doing our glacier tour. We didn't realise fox glacier was a place we could get off the bus and stay at. So we drove on about another 30mins to Franz Josef where we were due to get off and had booked our hostel. We had to do a bit of thinking as we had no idea how we were going to get to fox glacier for our tour. The town is tiny, about 20 shops/cafes/ buildings on the main strip, so we knew there would be no public transport between the two towns. This tour cost us about £200 already so we didn't really want to spend a lot of money getting to the tour when we shouldn't have needed to. so after speaking to the locals our options were...
1. Change the fox glacier tour to a franz Josef tour (turns out they are run by different companies so this wasn't an option, we also chose Fox because of its reviews, so we didn't want to do Franz)
2. Stay 1 night in Franz Josef, then move to Fox the next day for 2 nights (this meant we had to pay double on one night as our hostel in Franz would only let us off on our 3rd night)
4. We found out there was a $20 mini bus that leaves Franz for fox at 8am and back from fox at 3:30pm. We couldn't book this bus, and we may miss the 3:30 bus back so this seemed too risky.
5. Book a mini bus with our hostel owners friend, Murray for $30.
We chose option number 5 and booked murray to pick us up at 9am then bring us back once the tour had finished. The hostel was nice and had free yummy soup in the evenings and free breakfast so we didn't really want to leave.
It actually worked out better in the end as staying in the wrong place meant that we got to see two glaciers. On our 2nd day we walked to the Franz Josef Glacier valley. It was a hot day so it was strange seeing the ice forming up to the mountains. It was about a 2.5 hour walk one way to the glacier from our hostel. We stopped off at a waterfall. The valley where the glacier used to be was really cool to see. The glacier is disappearing back so we were lucky to see the top of it.
We got back to our hostel in time for free soup and i found a shop that sold coconut cadburys chocolate, only in family size form but i still managed to eat it all.
We were sharing our dorm room with a german lady in her 30's, she seemed to love getting tucked up in bed by 8pm every night, so every time we entered the dorm room for bed (not even late) we'd have to stumble around in the dark trying to find our toothbrushes.
The next day we packed our warm clothes (not Cj) and met murray for our lift to the fox glacier. We arrived at the fox building over an hour early for our helihike tour so we had a coffee.
We checked in and were given the low down on the refund policy as there was a cloud over the mountain. If the helicopter cant land then it means we wouldn't have been able to do the tour. We were given waterproof jackets and were given the go ahead so we made our way to the coach which took is to the helicopter.
At the helicopter port we were given our special boots, backpacks and instructions for the helicopter. The helicopter flight to the glacier was fun. I got to sit at the front next to the pilot. Its a lot smoother than a plane and you just rise. Its really cool seeing the view and it flew quite close to the trees on the mountain.
We landed on the glacier and we were greeted by our tour guides. A native Kiwi and a British guy. They gave us our crampons and we made our way over the ice. It was quite easy to walk if you dig your crampons in flat footed. We were guided round the ice caves and over mini waterfalls. The glacier has formed in the mountain valley from the cold air, snow and water.
We didn't walk all the way up the glacier as over a certain point humans have never walked. It wasnt cold but the air was quite bitter and the ice is obviously wet and freezing so when you go in the ice caves you get dripped on. We drank some of the pure water and it was icy and fresh.
The experience was amazing. Climbing the glacier is definitely a highlight of mine. The view was incredible and it was really fascinating seeing ice cravats (we had to step carefully around these as if you fall down them its a horrible death), streams, caves, waterfalls and ice formations.
This glacier is also reseeding up the mountain due to global warming.
After our 3 hour trek around the glacier we hopped back into the helicopter. I got to sit in the front again (it is because I'm small). They did squeeze 7 people into the helicopter.
A picture taken in 1930 and 2015
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