The next morning our charge was to make it to the Franz Joseph Glacier in time for our heli-hike tour. We arrived with oodles of time and in high spirits after stopping off to see lots of the beautiful landscapes along the way and finding this hotel was particularly nice. Franz Joseph is a pleasant little tourist town with not a whole lot going on, but no over-the-top presumptions or glamour either.
The heli-hike was great! We asked the chopper pilot on the way up to do some stunts and he willingly obliged, making me grateful I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Flying over and landing on the glacier gave us a new perspective and a better indication of its size – these things really are massive sheets of ice.
We landed on the glacier, met by our guides and off we trekked. To be honest, although this was probably the highlight of the NZ trip so far, it wasn’t quite what I expected. It was a warm day in the middle of summer so it was a boon to be walking over and through ice at all, but I was naïve and expected more ice-cave walking just like the brochure and website photos. Not that the experience was any short of fantastic!
A glacier is an amazing creature, bordering on a living organism in the way it moves and change and affects what’s around them. Beautiful and fascinating all in one.