Day on a Glacier

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This morning I didn't see Tom or Mark as I groggily trudged my way to breakfast. Today I could only stomach one piece of toast with jam instead of two and put down a few glasses of water. There has been a pretty gnarly cough and flu going around the bus and I had been struggling with it for the last two days. So i complemented my breakfast with some airborne and hot water. As i hopped onto the bus I quickly found the seat closest to the front, to minimize the motion I would feel and grabbed the second row seat. The bus had to leave late on the account of three of the girls from the tour woke up 5 minutes prior to the bus departure time. I looked behind and saw Tom and Mark and knew they were in teh same boat as me as we all looked pretty uneasy. I found out that Mark the previous night did decide to walk home. He took teh walk all the way to the bottom of the hill and then gave up and waited for a cab to drive by. Apparently Tom and I missed him by seconds. He said he heard the knocking on the door, as he had just got back and just couldn't get himself to get up to answer the door.

Finally the girls made it to the bus and we headed off to our next stop, Franz Josef. Today we were supposed to be doing the Heli-Hike. A helicopter ride to the middle of the Fox Glacier and then a hike at that area. However, as we reached the township we were informed that the helicopters were not able to take off that day, due to the low cloud cover and rain. So a bunch of us opted to just do teh half-day Glacier hike.

The hike was actually pretty good. We were given rain jackets, coveralls, wool socks and hiking boots and then all hoppe donto a bus. We took a short bus ride from the township to the bottom of the glacier. We then trecked to the actual glacier and once reached the icy paths fitted our boots with crampons. We then proceeded to walk around the glacier for a good hour or so. It was really beautiful and the views were pretty amazing. (Started to feel the bus sickness typing so I'll probably wrap this blog up shortly.)

After the glacier we headed to the town of Franz Josef, checked into our rooms and grabbed a group dinner. After dinner we headed to the hotpools located just down the road. After a relazing time in teh pools I headed back to the bar attached to our hotel and met up with Tom, Mark, and Ben. Tom and Ben are both from Australia and came together on the trip. The previous night Ben had gone skydiving and on his return couldn't find us at the bars. But those two blokes can throw back a grand amount. Ben himself owns a bar in Australia.

Tonight was a quiet night. I took a few shots of warmed brandy with lemon to try and soothe my throat and then called it an early night at around 1am. Luckily the next day we would be able to sleep in with a bus leaving time of 9am.

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