11th September - Franz Josef and his glacier

Queenstown is now history. We got up early as usual to get packed and to move on out. Queenstown is a real ski bunny/snow bum party town. But also just a nice chilled place with tonnes of crazy things to do like bungy, powerboats, the gondola and the Kiwi park.

Sarah and Liz went to the Kiwi park whilst I tried to buy new jeans as the old ones had a rather embarrassing hole in the crotch. Anyway, Kiwis come out to play at night time so the two girls went into the make shift night time hut to see them. Apparently, it took a few minutes to get your eyes used to the nightvision. Thinking to herself after 5 minutes, 'This is rubbish, I can't see anything!' Liz got up and came towards Sarah and removed her sunglasses for her. All was revealed. Apparently the Kiwis are pretty big.

Then we set off for our biggest drive yet, a 7 hour monster. This time to a town called Franz Josef where he harbours a lot of ice. From here Sarah and I split off from Liz as she went on a fancy smancy helicopter ride over the Franz Josef glacier and we got to do a half day hike to it and up it.

The glacier is truly a powerful and huge thing, it rips rocks off of walls and there are massive chasms in it. The guide kept saying things like 'Don't stand over here like an idiot as you may fall in' he then chucks some ice in and after 10 seconds or so there is a massive crashing/avalanche sound that appears to be the glacier breaking up. It didn't, but he then says 'I'm not coming down after you!'. Thanks buddy.

Here are some glacier shots: -

The trip was a long one and we were pretty knackered by the end of it. Liz had a great time too as obviously she got to go in a helicopter over the thing.

In the evening we kept up our pretences as the three wise people and won $30 in a pub quiz coming in second. We stupidly helped out the first team as well which was not in our interests but they looked in trouble early on. Damn liars!

Christchurch tomorrow!

Laters

Pricey and co.