Franz Josef

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Named after the Austrian Emperor at the time it was first explored by some Austrian dude, Franz Josef is most famous for its Glacier and scenic skydiving. Personally I'd have named it after myself rather than the Emperor of my country.

We were booked in for the skydive and glacier walk the following day but sadly the weather wasn't good enough for the skydive.

On the way to Franz Josef, hungover Chris, Will and I decided to get a fry up in the bushman's museum, and Dan went to the museum and missed out on the fry up. He did get to see a big old pig though, while we were probably eating its cousin. We actually weren't as in Australia and New Zealand, and from previous experience, in South East Asia, it is almost impossible to get a decent pork sausage, I think these ones were beef.

Arriving quite early in Franz Josef, we checked into the Rainforest Retreat and Will and I decided to spend the afternoon at Jungle Paintballing, and Dan and Chris chilled out in the spa pool. Paintballing was awesome, run by two middle-aged women, I thought it was going to be crap, but it was awesome fun. The jungle setting was great fun and at 45 bucks, it was an absolute bargain (I spent 60 bucks in total as I'm a bit trigger happy). Force and myself were on the same team and we won the games overall quite easily. The highlight of the day for me was shooting the Kiwi Experience driver, Steve in the face at point blank range. And the low point was the last round, where I was last to go out into the game area and find somewhere to hide. The fact that I only had 2 paintballs left meant I was going to receive more than I gave anyway. The whistle went and straight away someone popped up in front of me and shot me with about 8 paintballs, and didn't stop untill I cried out in pain. The mysterious paintballer who had obviously stalked me the disappeared, I shot my 2 paintballs at someone else, and left the game. Later on I was explaining how I'd been rinsed by this anonymous paintballer to Will and he burst out laughing. Very funny William, those paintballs really hurt!

That night we got an early night again, because of the glacier walk the next day, but I was kept awake by snoring again, and hardly slept at all. So with little sleep, we headed to the glacier walk centre in the pissing rain. We got all kitted out in the coats, hats, gloves, trousers, boots (which were already soaked) and headed to the base of the glacier on a bus. After getting dropped off, it was another 40 minute walk to the base of the glacier in the miserable weather which was taking a turn for the worse, walking through knee deep rivers because of the rain. When we got to the base of the glacier, the part where the crampons get added to the boots and the fun starts, our guide received a radio call and informed us that it was too dangerous to go ahead, and that just 2 weeks ago, 100 people had had to be airlifted off the glacier in similar conditions. So we walked the 40 minutes back to the bus and headed back to the centre, not best pleased. As the glacier walk is one of the top rated things to do in New Zealand, we were all gutted, and decided that we'd brave the 12 hour return trip from Queenstown to do it again when we hired a car to explore the south of the south island.

That evening was spent chilling in the spa pool and having a few beverages in the bar before bed. The next day was destination Lake Wanaka, where we would hopefully be able to do our skydive.

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