Franz Josef

We reached Franz yesterday afternoon and hiked to the base of the glacier. We got to explore the base of several small waterfalls and all sorts of rock formations. After dinner we explored the entire town, all 2 blocks of it, and had dinner at one of the 3 restaurants.

 

This morning we were off relatively early for our glacier heli-hike, which proved to be the definite highlight of the trip so far. They piled 6 of us into a helicopter and flew us up the valley to about halfway up the glacier to the landing zone. We could not have asked for better weather, sunny with a light breeze, for our 2 hour hike. Our guide led the way with a pickaxe charting our path and digging steps for our crampons, and led us up the glacier and through 2 ice tunnels. Altogether, it was a pretty stellar experience.

We just woke up from a 2-3 hour nap after the hike and went through a kiwi preservation exhibit. Though we’ve seen one in the wild so far, it was really cool to see 3 of them in their “natural environment” and learn more about them. Even better is that the café allows us 30 minutes of wifi access so we were more than happy to get a drink from them to catch up with the outside world.

Due to our limited bandwidth here, it doesn't look like we're going to get any pictures up from Christmas or the Glacier hike today. Hopefully our hotel in Queenstown will have internet for us and we'll be able to catch up with photos and communication.