Fox glacier

Hello,

Its so good how things work out sometimes. Yesterday i was going to go to fox glacier with pauline, hayley, and some dutch and brits. However, with my plan of not planning, the place to reserve the shuttle ride opened at the exact moment that the shuttle was leaving, which means i missed it. It was raining nicely so i thought it would be a good time to give hitching a go (fox is only about 45 minutes away from franz joseph). I was hoping pity would be high in the drivers. As I was packing up to go, i was talking to adrian and luis who were also leaving, and were going in my direction. 15 minutes later was riding in the back of their civic in a pile of backpacks heading to fox glacier (and i was dry). I must hitch once while i'm here, but it will have to wait if things keep going as they have.

Fox glacier was...very similar to franz joseph. There were little things different but you can't get on the glaciers without a guide, and i wasn't ready to do two glacier walks in two days. So maybe there were differences on the ice, but i couldn't really see them from the bottom. One part that was neat was the drastic change of environment. I rode a bike there and i saw this really cool bridge over the glacier water river. It was in the middle of a rain forest (with jurasic parkish waterfalls and all), 15 min. on bike later everything was rocky and barren, a 15 min. walk later and your at the edge of the glacier.

So, for the next few nights i'm in Wanaka. Its a small ski/lake town. I hear its cheaper to go snowboarding here than in queenstown, so thats got me interested. Pauline, Hayley, and crew are coming tomorrow afternoon, so maybe i'll wait till then. We're thinking about going to mt. cook. Its just a really tall mountain in new zealand, and for some reason it feels like we would be missing out if we didn't see it.

have a good day
your friend

chad