Glacier Country and Queenstown

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Well, we were a little worried we weren't going to get to go on our helicopter adventure. It was cloudy and raining, and when our flight time approached they informed us that the helicopters wouldn't be able to fly at that time. We chose to wait and see if we could take a later flight, and lucky for us it cleared up enough for us to go! We took our first helicopter ride up to the top of the Franz Josef glacier for a beautiful view of the area, and it dropped us off about 4 km up the glacier. We had a guide take us for an hour and a half hike across the glacier. It was actually pretty easy with the cramp-ons on our boots. The ice is a beautiful blue color. Unfortunately it started raining again while we were up there, but we still really enjoyed our time on the glacier. While in the area we visited another glacier and also walked around the beautiful Lake Matheson for some great views of Mt. Cook.



It was a long, winding drive to Queenstown, but we took our time and made a bunch of stops to check out some different towns. We also made a point to stop at some Lord of the Rings filming locations. Nothing is still there of the set of course, so we just had to visualize. Queenstown is a pretty great town. It's fairly small- only 11,000 people, but its right on a lake nestled in between some beautiful mountains. It's got a lot of tourist shops, but the scenery and yummy restaurants make up for it. Today we took advantage of our last day with the rental car and took a little day trip up to Glenorchy. Tomorrow we're off to hike the Milford Track, so we'll be away from civilization for 4 days. We'll update you when we return!



Love,

Briana and Brian

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