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Published: November 1st 2007
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We arrived and found a great cheap backpackers/motel called Chateau Franz. Then were holed up in our room for the rest of the day watching videos because it was chucking it down. Which apparently it does 260 days of the year, on average. We went out for dinner to a place that had a Halloween party on. Only to find that it didn't start till 10pm. The girls were a little disappointed that they didn't get to go trick or treating. Whilst sitting in the restaurant we say a place opposite that did flights over the glacier.
After much discussion and thought about Ellie's ears and Aisha dislike of anything scary, we chose to take a flight on a plane rather than on a helicopter. We are glad now as we have been told by someone that although you can get closer with the helicopter you get a longer and wider range with a plane.
The following morning we went to Mount Cook ski planes, www.mtcookskiplanes.com, and met James who was to be our pilot. He gave us a discount and said that he would go the long way around to climb to altitude to stop Ellie's ears being so bad.
So we arranged to come back in an hour.
As with all things it took a lot of persuasion to get Aisha to get in the car to go to the airstrip. She doesn't like flying at the best of times, and we have been on 3 planes in the last two months.
When we arrived the plane was at the end of the runway and ready to go. With the seat adjusted and the belts strapping us firmly in our seats of we went down the runway. I was expecting it to be a bit more rickety and bumpy but it was cool. Nothing like a jumbo where you get forced back into your seat.
We took off without a hitch and straight in to the commentary from our pilot. The commentary was brilliant with lots of background geological stuff and interesting bits about the wetlands near the sea. All of the peaks and glacier names were pointed out but as with all these things I can’t remember any of it. I have pictures of all of the glaciers and mountain peaks but can only remember which one was Mt. cook. You will just have to go and do
it for yourselves. I took 140 pictures in total, which I thought good going considering the flight was only an hour long!!!. Chloe also filled up the card on her camera with pictures and movie clips. I can only describe the views as bloody scary, I have a fear of heights if I haven’t mentioned it enough times, but also gob smackingly beautiful. Our pilot was fantastic and kept dodging the cross winds, although not completely as we had a bit of turbulence a couple of times. Which the girls didn’t like at all and Aisha was colouring in her activity book to try and get her mind off it. I have been skiing before and remember wearing glasses for the glare but this was ridiculous as I couldn’t see some of the pictures I was taking because it was so bright. We went from the west coast to the eastern side of the southern alps and then back over the sea to make a slow descent. You can see in one of the pictures the river that flows in to the sea of the melting water off Franz Josef glacier. The sea is discoloured brown with the debris that
gets carried down the mountain in the glacier. I had taken some lollipops for the girls to suck for their ears. The landing was better than some we have had in bigger planes. This is quite an achievement as we landed on a gravel runway. None of us could hear properly when we got down but we are still buzzing from it 8 hours after landing. It’s been quite entertaining shouting at each other and to see other people’s faces of confusion. It is definitely in both Chloe and Mine’s top 3 things that we have ever done. It was a lot of money but worth every penny. We are doing this trip for the experience and memories, today will go down as one of the best. As with everything that Aisha doesn’t want to do but we convince her to, she wanted to go again after we had landed.
As if that wasn’t excitement enough for one day we went to the Hukawai Glacier Centre. It’s an indoor ice climbing wall. You can walk around one side and see in to the Ice climbing area. Ellie was so excited about it she wanted to have a go. As she
has been so successful at rock climbing in the past I thought what the hell. We booked a slot to go back at 5.30 pm. The session is 1.5 hours long and two other people were in on it. They, being adults, were a lot quicker at it. Chloe & I would have loved to have had a go but after spending so much on the airplane this morning we couldn’t really afford it. Both Chloe and I thought that Ellie did brilliantly and we were really proud of how far she got up the wall. She was very scared and tired halfway up but pushed herself on. The only thing we were disappointed with was that we couldn’t find anywhere to get Ellie an ice cream to celebrate her achievement.
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