Franz Josef Glacier!!

Today was certainly a memorable day for 2 reasons. 1 Franz Josef Glacier and 2 for mosquitoes…

We woke up this morning in our little campsite to see the sun trying its hardest to break through the clouds, so seeing this as a perfect opportunity to climb a glacier we drove straight to the booking

The glacier

office in Franz Josef to see if they could squeeze us in on a tour today. Unfortunately the 12pm slots were all

Chris getting emotional

taken so the 3pm time looked the best option, although we wouldn’t return until at least 8pm. But the lady behind the counter noticed that there were 2 places left on the 10:30am tour and being 10:15am already

The glacier before we went on it

we thought we would just book it and go straight away, less chance of backing out that way. So Chris ran off to find some parking

Walking through thin walls of ice

whilst I ran to the supermarket to grab us some quick breakfast/lunch to wolf down before collecting all of our gear and getting on the bus.

We chose to go on the ½ day tour which took about 5 ½ hours of walking both to the glacier and on it, with 2 hours on the ice itself. It was an

Blue ice

absolutely fantastic experience but one of the most tiring things I have ever done in my life but so worth it! I could write for ages about it, but just look at the photos and you will be able

Hot and tired

to see just how beautiful it was. When we got back it was about 4:30pm and as mentioned before we were knackered and went for a well-deserved drink

In a ice cave

with a friendly couple we went on the tour with before going and sitting in some hot pools to soothe our aching muscles.

Steep climb

Then thinking an early night was in order we drove to a DOC campsite and found a lovely spot underneath some trees at the far end of the site, made some dinner, chilled out for a while, jumped into bed,

Climbing down and down

watched a film and heard some buzzing… The west coast of New Zealand is mostly famous for 2 things, 1, its outstanding beauty and 2, sandflies.

Chris looking gorgeous

And although sandflies are a right pain and there are literally swarms of them, they are easily killed as they are just so stupid.

Miles and miles of pure ice

Mosquitoes however are far more difficult to control and I think we undermine them as the clever creatures they are.

Loads of ice

So anyway, we thought that the sand-flies would be the things that would break us here, but no, it was in fact the mozzies, that are in fact way worse than in the whole of Africa and SE Asia,

Franz Josef Glacier

which we never would’ve thought possible.

Climbing down

After over 2 hours with the light on and head torches we must’ve squatted over 100 of the buggers with no idea whatsoever where they were coming from.

The fantastic blue ice

I know it sounds unbelievable, but it isn’t.

We were exhausted and completely fed up, but by 1am we gave up, thinking we had killed the worst of them, wrapped up in covers,

Walking through a cave in the ice

sweated so much due to the humidity but determined to ignore the buzzing and get some sleep.

After over an hour of trying and failing to get some sleep,

Climbing up the glacier

Chris turned back on the lights to check just how many there were and we were shocked to see our beige carpeted ceiling the colour black with hundreds and hundreds of them just sitting waiting to attack.

It was now 2:30am and we just had enough and outside our windows we could see hundreds more just waiting to get in, so the only option left was to get dressed and get the hell out of this place and find the next open petrol station to buy some insect spray.

So we decided to drive north and drove and drove and drove through thick fog on windy roads for 3 hours before we got into Greymouth and finally found a petrol station at just gone 5:30am,

Didn't know ice could be this blue

bought some bug spray and then tried to work out somewhere we could finally sleep. Of course everywhere was closed so we drove in circles for almost another

Getting the ice ready for us to walk on

hour until we found a back street away from houses that we prayed we wouldn’t get a fine for parking up, sprayed the whole van, stood outside shivering until the smell disappeared and finally went to sleep!

Franz Josef Glacier!!

Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand