Fox Glacier

We woke up at 8:00am so that we could pack up the car, check out and drive the 30 minutes to Fox Glacier from Franz Joseph. We had booked a half day tour for this glacier so that we would be able to actually get onto the ice. We arrived just in time for our 9:35am tour, despite being caught behind a few slow moving busses on our way. I thought we were doing really well driving our car and having to drive on the wrong side of the road. The tour people gave us some boots and crampons to use on our hike through the ice. Since it had been so warm the day before at Franz Joseph glacier, we declined the big rain jackets they provided and just brought our own smaller jackets in case we got cold. We all piled in the bus and drove down the road to the glacier entrance. There were 33 people in our tour so we split into two groups. There were 16 people who spoke mandarin, so they went with a mandarin speaking guide and we went with the guide from Canada.

The walk up to the glacier was pretty easy except that there were rock slide areas where we weren't allowed to stop because the chance of being hit by a falling rock was high. We made it to the glacier entrance and strapped on our crampons. They are little spikes that you can attach to your shoes to make sure you have traction and don't go skating down the ice into a crevice.

We walked around the glacier for over an hour. I really wanted to climb up to the top but apparently that is too dangerous. From what I can tell, the tour companies don't want the liability that comes with the unknown which I can understand but in my head I want to just sign a waiver and take my chances. The ice is 300ft deep and in some places you could see massive crevices and caves. I loved the deep blue color that some of the ice was. Our tour guide said the color was because when the glacier was formed, the snow was under so much pressure from the weight of the other snow above it that it became extremely dense ice and that ice cannot absorb the blue wavelengths from the sun so they are reflected to our eye as a brilliant blue.

We did stop before leaving the glacier to fill our water bottles up with cool, clean glacier water. Mmmmm, delicious!

Once we had finished our time on the ice, we headed back into town on the bus. After returning our equipment, Alyssa and I grabbed lunch at the little cafe connected the the guide shop and headed out of town. We were staying in Queenstown that night as a stopover on our drive down south to Milford Sound and it was a 5 hour drive to get there. Our only concern was that the Haake pass closed at 6:00pm since it was too dangerous to drive at night and the pass was two hours away from Fox glacier, so we needed to make sure to get there in time.
I drove for the first three hours as Alyssa slept and we made it through the pass with plenty of time to spare. When we arrived in Queenstown, it was nothing like what we had expected. We had been to other major cities like Auckland and Wellington that were nice but had no charm. Queenstown was like an alpine ski village but set on a lake. Everything about it was so nice and quaint- we really liked it! We checked into "Bumbles Hostel" where we had a six bed, shared dorm. Luckily, 5 out of the 6 people were girls and we were able to share a bunk (Alyssa prefers the top bunk now and I always let her chose her preference since she has such a hard time sleeping). The hostel had was in an amazing location overlooking the lake and less than a 2 minute walk into town.

We went out to walk around and get a feel for the town. There were tons of great little shops, bars and restaurants so it would be a great town to vacation in. Queenstown is also renown for its adventure sports, so it's definitely the place to try sky diving or bungy jumping.

We had perused all of the menus in town without settling on anything when we came upon a restaurant with a huge line out front. We checked it out and the line was for a place called "Fergburger". I vaguely recalled that my friend Te Tee had recommended that we go to some burger place when we got to Queenstown and based on its popularity, I figured this was the one. On top of that, the prices were much more reasonable than anything else we'd seen, so it was a no brainier. I got the "codfather" which was a fish burger and Alyssa got the "little lamby". I liked how much variety they had and the burgers were huge! It was delicious and I could see why it was such a popular option in Queenstown.

After dinner, we headed back to the hostel to go to bed. Unfortunately, the couple staying in our room had decided to watch episodes of "How I met your mother" on their iPad and although they were using headphones so we couldn't hear the show, the guy kept hysterically laughing out loud which was keeping the other four people in the room who were trying to sleep awake. It was so annoying and I wanted to kick him in the face. I guess that's dorm living though!

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