Louise's Travels Down-under!: Adventurous day at Franz Josef

Yesterday, Saturday, has to have been my most action packed day of my travels yet I think! It started off with Emma, Antonia, Oliver and me getting up at 5.45am to be ready for 6.15am to get picked up to go and do our skydive. Yes, I know I have already done one but I couldn't turn down the opportunity of doing another and this time over a glacier! The skydive was fantastic, although a lot colder than the one in Byron Bay. All I wanted to do was scream the whole way down but it was too cold on my teeth lol. On the flight up we flew beside Mount Cook (NZ's highest mountain) and Mount Tasman. We also flew over Fox Glacier. The skydive was from 12,000ft and was fantastic.

After we had all jumped out the plane we were quickly driven back to Franz Josef and arrived just in time for our check-in for the full day Franz Josef walk. Check-in was at 9.15am and we got back about 6pm! The walk was fantastic although I did find some parts rather scary. When we got onto the glacier, the first hour or so was walking what is called the black ice, this is the ice at the front of the glacier which has lots of rocks on it. Once we got up onto the blue ice we started to go through some more challenging parts. It wasn't until we were nearly down at the bottom that I managed to trust the shoe grips they had given us! Thankfully it stayed dry for us all day. I seriously have been so lucky with the weather, it is raining today and I really wouldn't like to be the groups up there at the moment. Thankfully I was planning a quiet day for today and so don't mind it raining! Anyway, back to the glacier walk, there isn't much more I can say other than you should do the full day walk if you are here. The half day walk doesn't leave the black ice and so you really don't see much. The three quarter day walk would be good but after making all the effort to get up onto the blue ice you don't really have time to explore it and see some of it's amazing features and with the helihike, I don't think you really get the perspective of the size of the glacier. We only walked a very small part of the huge glacier and when you see on a map how far we got up it, you really do get a feel for the size of it. The helihike is good though as you get a birds eye view of the glacier and you get to explore the blue ice without having to do the climb up and so would be good in that sense, if you have the money!! Anyway, I loved my day and was well tired by night time but it was really worth it.