NZ insert - Franz Josef glacier hiking

19 March - We finally found a bagel today! Our first in new zealand after about a week and a half. After brekky, we stopped at a gold mining town called Ross where they found the largest gold nugget dozens of years ago and didn't know what to do with it so it ended up being a door stop for a short time. The bus ride was uneventful - I was tired but could not sleep. I gave M a run down of las vegas and the west coast and around 1 pm we finally got to Franz Josef. It is an even smaller town than Greymouth! No banks - just an atm, 3 restaurants and 3 hostels all right next to each other (only 1 stop). We went into the glacier excursion office straight away and paid for our half day glacier hike. We had been thinking about the heli hike (I think the name itself just sounds so cool) but opted for the cheaper one - very non-flash-packer-ish I might add. Turns out that due to the weather the heli hike was cancelled. We felt really bad because there wasn't enough room on our tour to accommodate them and so they were going to miss out on the whole glacier experience which is pretty much the only reason to go to this place. Jen and I headed to an outside lunch spot with fire pits - it was definitely chilly and we were wondering how we were going to fair with this whole glacier thing and even discussed giving up our tickets to one of the 5. I had spinach and feta pie with greens - Jen went to check in and to get our stuff out of the tour bus - my backpack, small duffel, her backpack and rolling bag- bless her. After lunch we hut up the grocery store to get fruit, water and chocolate and then to gear up for our 3 pm hike. They gave us over trousers, rain jackets, boots, clamps, wool socks and gloves. All were pretty stinky. We suited up, laughed at how ridiculous we looked and piled into the bus to head 10 minutes down the road to the drop off point. There was a 45 - 60 minute walk through gravel, sand, rock - it was grayish and drizzling at times but you could see the ice up ahead and every direction that you turned was a picture spot. We actually ran into the cool couple from England that was on our wine tour in Nelson - it is a small world/country for sure! Our first guides name was Cliff and he looked like a mountain man. There were waterfalls everywhere - he said as many as 3,000 along the hills surrounding the glaciers on rainy days. He carried an ice pic and spoke of weather patterns, geology and explorers. As we got closer, we saw groups of people decending the mountain of ice in a line pretty slowly and I was like holy s***is this what we signed up for? Jen and I were always surprised how we only got part of the information in most cases and then ended up doing more extreme type stuff than we imagined. At the bottom of the hill that covered the glacier, we broke up in two groups - a slow and a fast, we opted for the slow. The first thing we had to do was climb a ladder that was flat to get over to the area we needed to be. We then started to walk up which our new tour guide - Ace - a cutie from Australia - said was going to be the hardest part. This was scary - small rocks would shift with each step and I felt unsteady often. My heart was going a mile a minute and I wouldn't look up or down but just right in front of me. Once we got to a certain point, we put our clamps on that dig into the ice and were told the best way to walk -feet apart and facing the direction you want to go. Lo and behold - the glacier! A gorgeous mix of ice peaks and touches of blue and gray. It was majestic looking and I am quite sure no pictures will do it justice. We walked through narrow passage ways and small caves and up and down and through and the temperature started dropping but it was so cool to be in the ice - touching it and completely surrounded by it. We took many pictures but probably not as many as we would have liked since we needed to keep up with the group. After about 90 minutes we started walking down which was equally scary. Out group was among the last on the ice that day and it was starting to get dark. I learned that we were only about 1/12th of the way up the glacier and that they have had people as young as 7 and as old as 80 on the ice. I had forgotten how long the trek back was...and it was down-right chilly at this point. We boarded the bus and got back to the office around 7:30 to peel off our gear. Next stop was the internet cafe followed by this spot we tried to have dinner but they told us the kitchen was full (weird) so we ventured to the pizza place and ran into Markus on the way so he joined us. Hawaiian pizza and local beer was the perfect way to end the day. We sat next to Maria and Stephan (also from England) and talked with them for a quite a while before calling it an early night and crashing. Slept pretty well in room #19 of Chateu Franz that was nothing fancy but pretty cheap and clean. Had to be at the bus at 7:30 am to head toward Queenstown - we have heard so much about this place and will have to see if it lives up to it's hype!