We had a late-ish start this morning, as we were booked on a half day hike on the Franz Josef Glacier. We had originally planned to go on the Fox Glacier hike, but I heard that you had to climb about 700+ steps just to reach the glacier, and the sound of that freaked me out, so I chose to do Franz Josef instead. 
Anyway, I wasn’t too sure what to wear, but the word glacier had me a bit worried. I piled on a few layers of clothes, and then we walked to the Franz Josef Glacier Guide office.
When we arrived, they gave us a short briefing of the extra clothes that we would need. They provided us with overtrousers to keep your pants from getting wet, hat, gloves, waterproof jacket, boots and crampons. After putting on all the equipment except for the crampons, we took a short bus ride to the starting point.
From the drop-off point, we had to walk through a small forrested area, and then it was about 40 minutes walk through a rocky area to reach the foot of the glacier. Along the way, we passed a few small waterfalls on the sides, which were really pretty. At this point, I was feeling a bit overheated from the many layers I was wearing, so I shed the poofy jacket layer. I guess it really wasn’t necessary to put on so many layers, the exercise would probably keep you warm anyway!
At the foot of the glacier, we were split into two groups. The first, was the one that would go a bit faster, whereas the second would be taking a more leisurely walk, with more opportunities to take photos. I wanted to go in the second group, because I knew that I wasn’t fit at all, but Terence wanted the first group, so that’s where we ended up.
About ten minutes into the hike up, I knew that it was going to be a tough day. The steps going up the glacer were pretty steep, and probably not made for a short person’s legs, especially an unfit person! I was huffing and puffing, and had already dropped back to the end of the group after a few mintues.
At this point, I was really glad that we hadn’t chosen to do a full day glacier trek, it probably would’ve killed me! Thankfully we stopped fairly often. As we were the first hike of the day, some of the steps needed hacking with the pickaxe, which our guide had to do, and this gave me a few minutes to rest each time. After an hour or so, we reached the highest point we would be hiking to, and this gave us a chance for a few photo opportunities.
After the glacier trek, we stopped for a quick lunch at The Landing, where we had a chicken cajun sandwich, and a bacon quiche.
We then set out for Wanaka. Initially, I was a bit worried about going over the Haast pass, as I had read in a few blogs that the cars had required snow chains to drive through the pass, and it was dangerous, and we would only be able to go at 25 kms per hour. In addition to that, someone had mentioned that during winter, the pass closed at 5pm! In this case, our only option would be to stay the night at Haast, but the accommodation reviews were pretty dismal.
We made a stop at the information center, and they reassured us that there was no snow, so the chains would be unnecessary, and the pass was only closed when the roads were dangerous. So, we were good to make our way to Wanaka. It probably took us about 4 hours or so, and by the end of the drive, my driving total stood at 350 kms since the start of our journey.
Our accommodation for the night was another YHA, and this one was quite different from the Franz Josef YHA. We were booked into a twin room at the YHA Wanaka, and we got something like a service apartment. There were two rooms inside this little cottage, one of which was ours. The other room was unoccupied, but it was locked. In the cottage, there were all the facilities, shower / toilet, kitchen, TV area. For the dorm rooms, we saw that the shower / toilet areas were actually outside the main accommodation area, so you’d have to keep coming outside into the cold if you wanted to use the facilities. I was really happy that ours was so much more convenient!
We had dinner at a nearby pub, I think it was called Muzza’s. The owner recommended the lamb, so we ordered that, plus a pork spare ribs appetiser, which I decided would be my main course. When it came out, it was pretty huge, 6 ribs! I would never have been able to finish the main course size, which was double the amount of ribs.
I’m constantly amazed at the amount of food that the locals can consume. We also had a dessert, which was too yummy that we didn’t even manage to take a photo. After dinner, it was back to the YHA for the night.
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Is this a food blog? It sure looks yummy! NZ50 for an average meal? *rolls eyes*
Betcha gonna come back all tubby.