Day 93: Franz Joseph (day 1)‏

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The South Island is renowned for its small population and some people might say its slightly odd locals... this came to light when we stopped at Pukekura and The Bushman's lodge for breakfast. Here they sell Possum pies, Possum fur nipple warmers and all sorts of other weird stuff! Nonetheless Pete the owner seemed pretty nice and cracked a few jokes for us. Our next stop was Lake Mapourika for a brief picture before arriving in the small town of Franz Joseph. We wolfed down our lunch and geared up for our ice explorer adventure on the Franz Joseph glacier. We'd caught a glimpse of the glacier from the road, but only when we were approaching in the helicopter did we get the 'wow' factor. We explored the ice for 3 hours with our guide Rich, in and out of tiny crevices and climbing stairs he'd hacked out of the ice in front of us. We'd been provided with all our equipment and I was loving the woollen socks and mittens. We were having such a great time that our guide lost track of time and we missed our transfer back down on the helicopter! They have a container with tents and sleeping bags up on the ice for emergencies ... but we didn't get stranded in the end and we made it back down in the next helicopter. Bailey's bit: Rich explained how the glacier has world heritage status, it is one of only 3 where the glacier is within a subtropical rainforest. He also explained how it had retreated 800m and dropped 50m in the last 4 years, another bad sign of global warming. In the evening we caught up with the members of our north island bus before they headed off in the morning and we partook in the limbo competition after a couple of drinks to loosen off the limbs.Daily mileage: 4(am) being in the middle of nowhere I had to resort to running up and down the main highway with a a quick loop down to the lake and back.4 (pm) after the glacier hike I had an explore of the town as well as the start of the route we were thinking of walking in the morning.

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