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We hitched down to the Fox Glacier on boxing day. It’s more difficult hitching as a pair of guys but we got lucky. First lift took us to Hototiki, on the way we saw one of the other guys who had hitched earlier from the hostel waving at us from a passing van. A few minutes later the van came back, we’d got a lift. Dudi the Israeli hitcher had boasted that he could get all three of us a lift, and to be fair to him he’d managed it.

Stayed at the Ivory Towers hostel. Another nice hostel, in a nice area, New Zealand has no shortage of nice cheap places to stay. Booked a guide for walking on the Glacier the next day.

The walking on the Glacier was only possible with the aid of instep crampons, without them we would have been sliding around all over the place. Some of the crevices were 40m deep, but the widest I saw were less than 50cm so apart from cuts and scraps not too much damage would have been done. The guide regaled us with many stories of stupidity and accident from the glaciers.



True? Could be. The story served a couple of purposes though, 1) It’s silly hiking alone in dangerous places. 2) It made us all feel better about having paid money for what is basically a walk on some ice.

The glacier was eerie, tortured shapes of twisted ice rise up making strange silhouettes on the skyline. Ice caves and blue crevices dot the area. Most of the day it rained on us. The sky around the mountains and to the base of the Glacier was mostly clear, the cloud seemed to like it over the Glacier and was intent on staying there all day.

Anders had met some more Danish people in the hostel and one of them had offered us a lift to Wanaka so we got back and went straight on to Wanaka in the Blue Lightning - a 1979 Mark I Ford Escort, a vintage machine with Martin our driver. Martin and Anders spoke much Danish in the front and I slept happily in the back.

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