South island cont'd

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16/10/08 Franz Josef - Wanaka

Well I certainly spoke too soon about the nice weather; it has not stopped raining since! We were really disappointed that our helihike was cancelled due to the bad weather so instead we took a guided hike up the glacier instead. It was a 45min scramble through streams and boulders to get our first close up view of the glacier but it was well worth it, it’s an impressive sight. Our climb then took us up the glacier with the aid of our crampons and occasionally steps already cut into the ice by the guides. It was great to be able to get so close to a natural phenomenon that I have only studied before in geography! Towards the end of the hike it was getting a bit chilly as you'd imagine so it was a relief to begin the descent back down to warmer conditions and a welcome hot chocolate back at the guiding centre!

Today we planned to go to Lake Matheson at dawn to see the reflections of Mount Cook and the glacier but the weather was so terrible we couldn't see anything but clouds and rain! We than walked as far as the trail would allow towards Fox Glacier which was equally impressive. We were disappointed again not to be able to take a flight over the glaciers but the weather is pretty bad so we had no chance of getting a helicopter. Our guide yesterday said it rains 250days of the year in this part of the country so they are well used to it!

I had a slight disaster when I tried to download our first weeks worth of NZ photos and the XD card got corrupted. I was gutted to have lost some amazing photos from NZ but Jon, ever the pragmatic, immediately launched into damage limitation and after a frustrating couple of hours managed to download some photo recovery software and saved most of the photos, much to my relief!

We are now in Lake Wananka which is beautiful. We have a skydive booked for tomorrow but we are worried it will be called off, here’s hoping for an improvement in the conditions overnight!

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