Leaving the beaches and sunshine behind, we continued our journey south, to glacier country ( don't think it's actually called that, but there are a couple of glaciers very close to each other...)
We chose Fox for it's cozy hostel (Ivory towers) and the fact that it's a smaller place so we'd have more glacier to ourselves. Not that you can really have the place to yourself as the only way to actually get up on the ice is a part of an organised tour, which provides you with sexy leather boots and crampons to keep you steady on the ice. Rick reckons I should really have a modified version for everday walking around, given my propensity for tripping over nothing..but I'd probably cause someone, or even myself, an injury with spikes attached to the bottom of my feet.
Fox Glacier was beautiful, shades of grey through white to blue (something to do with UV light not being absorbed) and quite otherworldly. It was also quite a threatening environment, with the creaks and groans of the ice constantly around us, and the odd crevasse and big hole in the ice to avoid. Our cheerful guide, Tamra, who was nearly as big as her backpack full of ropes and ice equipment should any of us need rescuing, kept us on a safe path though, and we all got back in one piece - so falling down crevasses on this occasion. It was a grey, drizzly day, so I'm not sure that the photos can really do justice to the beauty of the glacier, but it was another great New Zealand moment - something we'd never done before and another memory to treasure.
Back at the hostel we thawed off by the wood burning stove, and Rick cooked a sumptuous meal of stuffed peppers that had everyone else in the hostel drooling....
We chose Fox for it's cozy hostel (Ivory towers) and the fact that it's a smaller place so we'd have more glacier to ourselves. Not that you can really have the place to yourself as the only way to actually get up on the ice is a part of an organised tour, which provides you with sexy leather boots and crampons to keep you steady on the ice. Rick reckons I should really have a modified version for everday walking around, given my propensity for tripping over nothing..but I'd probably cause someone, or even myself, an injury with spikes attached to the bottom of my feet.
Fox Glacier was beautiful, shades of grey through white to blue (something to do with UV light not being absorbed) and quite otherworldly. It was also quite a threatening environment, with the creaks and groans of the ice constantly around us, and the odd crevasse and big hole in the ice to avoid. Our cheerful guide, Tamra, who was nearly as big as her backpack full of ropes and ice equipment should any of us need rescuing, kept us on a safe path though, and we all got back in one piece - so falling down crevasses on this occasion. It was a grey, drizzly day, so I'm not sure that the photos can really do justice to the beauty of the glacier, but it was another great New Zealand moment - something we'd never done before and another memory to treasure.
Back at the hostel we thawed off by the wood burning stove, and Rick cooked a sumptuous meal of stuffed peppers that had everyone else in the hostel drooling....
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