Saying goodbye to the people not doing the South Island with Contiki meant that we had another load of people join us! We had to do the get to know you type stuff that we have been doing each time new people join, except this time, as it's Valentines Day, Hayley made us do 'speed dating' with the new people. It was a great idea, but everyone was so knackered so wasn't as fun as it could've been! Our first stop was at Springfield. Hayley played 'The Simpsons' theme tune before we got there and said they had a big pink donut in the park. After the whole cloud maker incident Emma and I were reluctant to believe her... but there actually was one there!
We got to Franz Josef with enough time to check out our rooms and get changed ready for dinner and the traffic light party. I did not have anything green and the closest I had to orange was peach so I just rolled with that! The food was good, pork with potatoes and coleslaw and then the choice for pudding was either chocolate cake with a fruit garnish or a baileys and butterscotch shot. Honestly, it was the hardest choice of my life, but ultimately I decided to do the shot as we were staying at that place for the party!
The traffic light party was fun... but the dj (dj panda) was terrible! Although he did take my cheesy request for Peter Andre haha!
The following day it was time to walk the glacier! Something I never even thought I would do in my lifetime!
We got a helicopter over to the glacier, you used to be able to walk there but it has receded so much that it is only accessible by air now. It was my first helicopter ride and I got to sit at the front which was awesome!
Our guide was brilliant, he'd only been working there for a week months but he really knew his stuff and made the whole experience awesome! Once we landed, we were instructed on how to attach our crampons and were told to stomp our feet in to keep walking steady. We trekked around for a bit and it was so incredible to see such an amazing natural formation up close. It is beautiful.
At one section the guide found a cave and, after checking it out for us, he let us crawl through. It was weirdly bright inside as the glacial ice is more of a translucent blue so it let the light inside. It was incredible.
In total we had just over 2 hours on the ice and it was he most surreal experience of my life (second to skydiving!) It's so crazy to think that the Franz Josef glacier may not be here in a few decades time so it was really an honour to get to see it so close and personal.
After we got the helicopter back to town, we chilled out a bit and grabbed some food before heading to the glacial hot pools. They were stunning. There were three pools in total, ranging from 36 degrees to 40 degrees. We bumped into our guide there as well which was pretty cool!
However me being me, I forgot to bring a towel and didn't have any money on me to hire one so I basically had to run back to the hotel in my wet stuff! Not my brightest idea (you'd think I'd learn after taupo!) I decided to chill in the room tonight, watch a bit of greys anatomy and grab an early night for a change!
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