Day 52

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So, the fancy dress party was fantastic. The theme was "no clothing" so you could wear ANYTHING but clothing. There were a lot of towels and dustbin bags, and one guy just wearing some girl's handbag. Another wearing just a pillow. They were very body-confident. I was wearing loads of maps taken from the tourist office stuck together with sellotape. It was GREAT fun, I can't wait to put up the photos on facebook so you can see some of the ideas people came up with!!

Yesterday was fairly uneventful, we drove all the way here - to Franz Josef. It's a tiny TINY town (if you can call it that) which is right next to a glacier. I bet there are more backpackers in this hostel alone than live in the entire town. I went for a walk with some cool people to some caves. They were made by the gold miners and we walked through FREEZING water to look at glow worms. Then I cooked dinner for a few people, which was nice.

Today I went on a full day glacier trek. Words can't express properly how AMAZING it was. I had SUCH a good time, I honestly wasn't expecting it to be even nearly as good as it was. We got kitted out with crampons and waterproof gear, then were split into groups with a guide per group. There were 11 people in my group. I wanted to go pretty slow due to ankle difficulties, but everyone in the group was under 25 so we went at an under 25 pace - pretty fast with lots of long breaks (which was perfect for me). I'm going to try and put up all these photos when I get to Queenstown (in two nights) so you can see how cool it was. We were walking all over the glacier, through holes and cracks and crevasses for 5 or so hours. The guide would sometimes have to use his ice pickaxe thing to carve out a path for us, but it was fairly easy going the whole way. There was a nasty walk to get there though, which was equally slippy and steep on the way down. This trek was easily in my top 3 things I've done so far in New Zealand, and you guys all know how much I've been up to! The walking over the glacier wasn't particularly hard, but I'm feeling it a bit in my legs now. I'm going to not cook tonight, just go to the bar for food with some girls from the room. We already had some quality time in the free hostel jacuzzi when we got back.

Tomorrow I head to Wanaka, which I believe is ANOTHER lake (what a surprise). I have one night there, then I get to Queenstown which is backpacker paradise. I have a day trip to Milford Sound, one of the most beautiful places on earth (apparently) then I start heading back up north again. My time in New Zealand is coming to a close!!

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