More pictures and glaciers!

I went back and added pictures to the Wellington post and the Nelson post, scroll down to check them out!

After leaving Nelson early in the morning, we drove for about 7 hours down the west coast and finally arrived at the Fox Glacier. The website (at least to my recollection) for the tour we went on said we would take a pleasant walk through the forest, climb some stairs cut into the glacier, and enjoy 40 minutes on the ice. HA! The pleasant walk was actually a steep set of stairs up the side of a mountain, up a 12 step ladder, up some more, back down, and then out onto the glacier. Quite a bit more rugged than expected! Still, we made it and it was well worth it. The glacier really is like nothing else. I guess I expected it to be like hard packed snow, but it is definitely ice. Here are a few pictures:



That doesn't even begin to show you how tall this thing was. It goes all the way back into the mountains (you can kind of see where it begins in the top of the picture). The guide said it was about 5 km from the beginning to the end - almost all up or down stairs!

And here we are, triumphant after our "pleasant walk":



It started to rain while we were on the glacier, so we got soaked (again!). However, not too much longer later, we were back on the road to Queenstown. Eventually, the road forced us to stop in Haast, which is where I made my last post. The next day, we rose early and got back on the road (more in the next post).