The Highway

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Morning. Breakfast. We happen to eat it at Franz-Joseph glacier village, because yesterday evening we watched the sunset on Mt. Cook and the equally impressive Mt. Tasman, from the near-by lake Matheson. As both Tomer and I walked on the glaciers already and Maayan wasn't interested (surprisingly enough, not such an interesting experience altogether, too long for just a little bit of walking on ice in a kanyon), we planned to finish breakfast and get away.
Suddenly, a Helicopter buzzes by. Maayan says something about how neat must be the scenic flights to the top of the glaciers. But of course it's too expensive.
Silence. Eating. I raise my eyes and meet Maayan's. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?".
Ten minutes later, we are at the counter. Hour and a half later, the helicopter takes off. We took the cheapest flight, just to the Franz-Joseph glacier, but as there wasn't enough people, they secretly upgraded us to the the longer one with the two glaciers.
This was absolutely incredible. An actual helicopter ride turned out to be great fun by itself, but the scenery! Just a short flight from the shore and we are looking at Fox glacier, and towering above it we can actually see Cook and Tasman in all of their snowy glory, in the crisp blue skies. Two more minutes and we are above the glacier, flying over the immense ice field between the alps that feeds the glacier. Up here, it's really easy to picture the glacier as an ice river, slowly flowing from the mountains toward the sea, turning into a river at bottom termination of the glacier.
Still amazed from the scenery, the pilot turn the chopper and flew us back to Franz-Joseph, going over caverns of ice, bottomless crevices and even an alpine hut. There, the highlight of the tour awaited us. We actually landed on the glacier, and stepped on the ice. Standing there, you feel transported to world of ice, a different place altogether. Just mountain peaks and snow all around you, and blue skies above. I just started running on the completely flat and seemly infinite ice surface, nothing like the ice ridges at the bottom that I climbed a couple of weeks earlier. Truly amazing. The whole thing took around 40 min and was totally worth it.

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Photos

The mountains and the glacier
Mt. Cook on the top right, Mt. Tasman on the top left and Fox Glacier on the bottom.

Comments

[Anat]

WOW, an upgrade is good...
I also loved chopper flights... and yes the scenery is absolutely amazing. When you get to OZ, don't forget to take one over the great ocean road in Victoria (cheaper than NZ, don't worry)