Holiday Part 6

Hello all,

Lots to tell, but first I need to start out by saying a few things:

1. "Himself"'s real name is Michael. I was going for the internet anonymity pseudonym, but since this blog is called Helen and Mike, it was pointed out to me that this was a little pointless. My name is Helen, by the way.
2. Blog authorship. This a collaborative effort from both Helen (me) and Mike. You don't see it, but there is lots of "honey, what was that place we went to the other day"-ing going on, so it counts as a group project.

Day 11 cont.:
Dinner out in QTN was lovely, we ended up at a self-brewing pub and ate so much we both felt pleasantly sated. Dessert was at Patagonia Chocolate on the wharf, and even though the sundaes took forever to arrive, my my but they were worth it!

Day 12:
We finished up our stay in Queenstown by going to a fab Lonely-Planet recommended cafe for breakfast. Their pancakes were divine. Then up the hill to the bungy site.
Mike was SO brave and by far the spunkiest dude jumping. Thanks to those who have asked, and no, his eyeballs did not fall out, they're fine.
We had watched a few jumpers, then Mike went out onto the bridge to wait. Expect to see the photos. The dudes assured us that no-one had died that day, so we seemed pretty safe. Mike was strapped in, lined up, and I ran for the photo viewing stand. He just stood on the edge, waved and whoosh! over he went. Arms and head went in the waters, then he was springing up and down a few times. I was REALLY impressed, it looked so cool.

After that adrenaline rush, we drove to the west coast of South Island and on to glacier country. We're staying at a nice place in Franz Josef, the larger of the glacier towns (Fox is the other). We checked in, settled in and had dinner. Yum.

Day 13:
Glacier adventure day! M got up REALLY early [those of you who know me will know that I'm REALLY not a morning person. Sleep is one of my favourite things to do, and I love to sleep in. A lot. One of the many reasons that I love that M has been getting out of bed and making me cups of tea each morning!] and went to the booking office to get in first. He planned the whole day of adventures, and it's been a hoot.

We hopped on a helicopter which travelled to Fox Glacier, Mount Cook and Franz Josef Glacier. The weather on Mt Cook wasn't great, so we weren't sure if we would be able to see it, but fortunately our pilot was very cool and the clouds cleared enough for us to have a decent look. It was REALLY beautiful - white mountains everywhere, a crystal-clear blue sky, still air, all you could hope for. Our helicopter landed on Franz Josef glacier, and I GOT TO SEE SNOW!!! It was crunchy! Amazing! I've never seen snow up close before, and seeing and touching it on the top of about 6km of compacted glacial ice was stunning.

Back to the motel for an early lunch, then we joined a walking tour of FJ glacier. We were kitted up with boots, crampons, parkas etc and bussed out to the glacier National Park. It's a declared World Heritage area, so we had to be really careful not to leave anything behind.

We walked through the river valley to the glacier face. It was amazing - lots of rocks that get pushed along by the tonnes of ice, then this massive wall of ice. It was surprisingly grotty - lots of grit gets picked up too.

Treking up the glacier face was amazing. The defined path is very dynamic and changes almost daily, so the highlight was probably squishing along the bottom of a crevasse - the ice was almost glowing, it was such a stunning blue. Out tour dude was pretty cool, and the only bummer was Helen having some blood sugar issues on the way back to the bus, but fortunately Mike came to the rescue with the emergency bottle of Mellow Yellow (it's having a retro revival here - tastes bloody awful if one happens to be hypoing).

Tomorrow, we're travelling back to Christchurch via Greymouth.

Sweet dreams.