Lins and Rich’s Travel Blog

Good news - we got up on Monday morning to glorious sunshine and clear skies and headed back to the glacier guides centre to be told that things were looking good to fly today. the 5 of us jumped into the minibus and were dropped back at the helipad. This time, not only did we get into the helicopter but we managed to take off too! For those of you who know how I feel about flying, this may come as a bit of a shock, but helicopter rides may just be my new favourite thing. The take off is so smooth; you are literally transported from the ground to high in the air in a matter of seconds and there is none of that feeling that the rear wheels won’t get off the ground!

I simply cannot describe the incredible sights we were witnessing, but I guess I should try. As we glided effortlessly through the air, we cruised over the glacier, surrounded by towering mountains and had views of Mount Tasman and Mount Cook (the highest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere, climbed by the likes of Sir Edmund Hilary). It was simply overwhelming to be surrounded by such immense natural beauty. I couldn’t stop smiling. Well, I did stop for a few seconds when I realised the door I was sat right next to had been accidentally knocked open by our guide, but even that didn’t faze me for long as I was just totally absorbed once again by the view. The pilot headed straight for a mountain face to give a us a fantastic view of a waterfall that tumbles hundreds of metres into what is a lake when topped up, and what is otherwise a massive black hole. He swung the chopper round, pulling it sharply down and round to the left and we too headed towards the black hole. Then he evened off the height and brought us in to land on the blue ice high up on the Fox Glacier.

I was the first to be guided out of the helicopter and had to be held onto tightly by the guide as this was like trying to ice skate without the aid of the blade! One wrong move and I’d have been flat on my face, or arse, depending on which way I fell. Fortunately (at this stage at least) I managed to stay upright and grabbed the instructor’s bag which served as my support while he got everybody else out. Once we were all in position, the helicopter cruised off and we were left, alone, on the gorgeous glacier. We couldn’t believe our luck that we had this beauty to ourselves.

Next step, before taking any steps, was to get the crampons attached to our boots. Not being the most practical person in the world, I listened carefully to the instructions about how to put them on, took my pair from the guide, managed to pull one apart, then put it back together incorrectly. I decided it would be best just to wait for the guide to do it for me! We then stomped around a little on the ice to get used to the best way to walk and to practise going up and down bumps.

Once we were all confident with our crampons, the guide began to lead us up the glacier where we explored crevasses, moulins, water pools, frozen water (yes, the glacier is all frozen water, but this is water that has fallen as rain etc. and is not part of the glacier) and crawled through a couple of ice caves. The Fox Glacier moves much more quickly than most glaciers and also retreats and advances more quickly - the guide said that when he came back for the start of the season after 12 months away, the glacier had advanced about 150 metres. The guide was extremely informative and very safety conscious - there are a lot of large holes to fall down up there and many would lead to a certain death. But there’s not a lot he can do about generally slips and slides on the ice apart from providing a mat to sit on when you fall hard and slam your knees into a block of solid ice, jarring your back and sending excrutiating pain into both knees so you can’t support your weight with your legs for a few minutes. Still, no permanent damage done - I just have a couple of very bruised and battered looking knees and the usual sore back!

After 2 hours climbing the ice, we began our descent back to the helipad and stood aside to watch as 5 helicopter loads of locals on a ‘get to know what’s in your backyard’ trip and a couple of other tourist groups were delivered to the ice. We were grateful none of them had got out of bed any earlier as we had been lucky enough not see another soul on the ice until this moment.

With the crampons removed, we were ushered back in to the helicopter for our journey back to town. I beamed from ear to ear all over again for another 5 minutes as we watched the glacier terminate and become a river. This definitely rates as my favourite activity of my travels and is genuine one of the most incredible, amazing, wonderful things I have ever done. Wow!

After we’d got over how incredible our morning had been, we set off for Queenstown. The drive is spectacular as you follow the highway along the line of the Southern Alps. The views over Lake Wanaka were particularly impressive; that was, until the cloud came in, which it did extremely quickly. The sun fell too and we could just make out the form of the mountains in the distance and see the cloud way below us, laying like a rug of snow forming a floor in between the mountains as we approached Queenstown via the ’scenic route’ from the town of Wanaka. We began to descend on the winding road into town down one of the mountains and drove straight into the cloud. It was so thick we could barely see more than 3 metres ahead of us as we negotiated the hairpin bends. Scary.

Bad news - we got to Queenstown and, as suspected, there is no snow on the mountains and no sign of it appearing any time soon. The ski resorts are closed until at least the 23rd when they hope some snow may fall or the temperature may drop enough for them to use their snow machine to create snow. For now though, skiing’s off. We set about changing our plans and reduced our 4 night stay in Queenstown to 2 nights. We had been advised we could get a reasonable refund on the skiing package so we decided it would be best to just spend a couple of days here to see what the town has to offer other than extreme sports (there are bungy jumps and white water rafting trips, canyon swings and paragliding etc. all around town).

Then we went to our dorm room and were greeted with an absolute tip - the room itself is fine, but the people living in it are messy to the extreme. We panicked! Rich wanted to change rooms which wasn’t possible, so he wanted to change hostels instead. I had reservations about changing as we’d lose a lot of money, but I did also have some reservations about what sort of people we’d be sharing with - we were envisaging 18 year old kiwi experience pissheads. Then, as we were going up to collect our bags, we met some of our roommates. They seemed sound and showed they were also considerate as they had some booze and a couple of mates with them and offered to go and drink it elsewhere. Clearly we’d judged too harshly and decided to stay. Seconds later, the rest of our roommates arrived and they seemed equally lovely. We all sat up talking until one in the morning!!!

This morning, we’ve had a whole heap of silly fun. After sorting out the skiing refund, we took a gondola (cable car) ride up the mountain, admired the stunning views over the lake and then did a couple of luge rides at the top. I haven’t been on a luge since I was a kid and mum had to stop her tabogan and catch me as I went flying over the top of her near the edge of the mountain as I couldn’t work out how to stop my tabogan. That had put me off a bit! I took the first run very cautiously but got a bit of confidence for the second run. Rich just went flying round the track both times.

Then we played what I believe may be the best mini-golf course in the world. Seriously, this indoor course has 18 themed holes with obstacles that include your ball riding on a mini chair-lift on the ski hole, setting off a wood chopping machine on the timber plant hole, and setting off a sweets machine that gives out lollies on the 18th. Great fun!

As the skiing is most definitely off, we are going to head on South tomorrow and explore Fiordland over the next couple of days before making our way to Invercargill, the most southerly city in the world, and then heading back up the East coast to spot whales and rare penguin species. Hey, we can ski Europe!