Hoooray! It was Easter day! With uncharacteristic foresight, we had bought Easter eggs for each other, which we enjoyed at the end of the day.
After paying our dues, we left our pretty campsite in Wanaka, and headed on through the equally pretty Mount Aspiring National Park, stopping at an incredible river with boulders bigger than cars in it, to take the odd photo or two.
Hitting the coast at Haast, we got out again a little further up at a place called Ship Creek. This was a beautiful sandy beach littered with driftwood of all shapes and sizes which we had fun admiring and taking what we hoped were artsy photos. 
Armelle soon found out that all wasn’t well in paradise though, when we discovered these little biting insects called sandflies, which look like tiny flies, but are actually tiny Draculas in disguise, and which were to become our nemeses…. Hastily retreating to the safety of Cleopatra, we carried on our way, until hunger struck. We paused to enjoy the last sharp contrast of the ocean and the almost tropical lushness of the vegetation next to the stretch of sand that was Bruce Bay, before heading inland after a quick sandwich in the sunshine. 
It was hard to believe that we were going to be in glacier country before tea time, it was so lovely there soaking up the sun, swatting the sandflies... But indeed we were, and Jess could hardly contain her excitement as we approached Fox glacier and found time for a hike up to the terminus. 
We stood in awe of the rest of the glacier which loomed above us and disappeared out of sight up into the clouds.
That night we stayed in the Franz Josef Top Ten, which was possibly the best holiday park we had stayed in, but we were disappointed to find that our Fox Glacier walk had been at the expense of the main (Franz Josef) glacier walk the next day, as, despite being assured that we could book on arrival by a lady in the tourist office at Haast, we had forgotten that it would be Easter Monday, and apparently everyone knew that the Top Ten in Franz Josef was the best…Undeterred, we delayed our departure by a day, which was actually not a bad move in the end. Jess spent the morning doing some ice climbing on an indoor wall (the only one in N.Z), which was awesome. She was given lethal looking crampons, and a pair of ice axes which were considerably more modern and light-weight than she had imagined, thank goodness!
After a few pointers, she had a go climbing the wall, safe in the knowledge that she was attached to a metal bar at the top, and was very proud of herself when she completed all three walls, even though she nearly came a cropper on the last one: ‘I’m just warning you, I’m not very stable’….
It was definitely a highlight of the trip for her, and the buzz far outweighed the mild and unexpected snow blindness which resulted in her wearing sunglasses to do the blog later that evening. Nevertheless, she felt like a bit of an idiot. The Internet café itself was pretty cool though, it was in a big red bus.
The next day we were both very excited to be doing the ¾ day ice walk on the Franz Josef glacier. When we had got all togged up in more crampons, gloves and coats etc, we headed off, to start the adventure with an hours’ walk to the terminus of the glacier. Our guide Thomas, who was also a bit of a nutter (as we later found out) gave us some of the glacier’s history along the way. The first supra-glacial part of the day was a walk on pre-carved stairs. We were told to pretend we were kicking our ex-boyfriends to get the crampons to work effectively, and, lo and behold, the stairs were no longer a problem! Funny that! We then had lunch on a rather big and to be honest comparatively unattractive lump of lateral moraine (rock debris removed from the valley sides by the glacier), from which vantage point we watched Thomas, who was ‘responsible’ for us, attempt to defy gravity, and successfully defy suicide, though not unscathed. As far as Jess was concerned, he was literally in full view one moment, and nowhere to be seen the next. Armelle, however, got to see the full performance in which he nose-dived down a sheer ice face, and reappeared cut, limping and bloodstained. As he hastily put his jumper on so as not to scare us too much (a bit late for that), he informed us that it was not his week, as he had ‘done the classic’ and put his ice-axe into his shin a few days previously. Somewhat more dubiously than before, we followed as he cut our route for us, where we had to squeeze through holes and practically abseil down ice faces. Many great and beautiful photos were taken, which sadly are no more, this will be explained when you get to the Auckland section, but for now you’ll have to just imagine the blue ice crevasses and us two, rosy-cheeked and sliding around like we were walking on ice, which of course we were. We lived to tell the tale, however, as you may have noticed…
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