NZ Day 9 : Franz Josef (still)

27/9/10 (Mon)

This morning I made french toast and baked beans. yum. I love those canned tomato beans.

 It was the morning of our glacier tour and we were super excited. The only reason I decided to put this onto our itinerary was because my boss was stressing again and again that the glaciers are a must-go attraction. Hence, I was only following orders. :P

As we were walking to the Franz Josef Glacier Guides Office, we passed by a Coca-cola truck with the coolest number plate ever.

 Upon reaching the office, it was quite a letdown when we were suddenly coaxed into changing our tour to the afternoon session only because there were just the two of us for the morning session. Reluctantly we agreed...what to do...we could only pray it doesnt rain in the pm!

 We ended up taking a morning stroll around town, admiring the pretty flowers along the roads.
And more Scrabble time for us while waiting for 2.15pm to arrive.

 The time finally came and thank god for the perfect weather. Dunno why it looks gloomy here but in actual fact, it was beautiful skies.

 Quite bummed out that we didn't get the chance to wear these cool boots known as crampons.
We would have, if we had signed up for the half day ice climbing tour instead of a 2-hour Valley Walk.

 Not that we were an old haggard couple with insufficient stamina to climb an icy hill, but just thought we would take things light and easy on our honeymoon and avoid activities that could bruise our pretty selves during that time. hehe.

 The Valley Walk started from the base where we walked through a cool rainforest for some 20 minutes.
So much for changing our walk to the afternoon session...there was only one other couple of an Indian mother and son from Canada. Nevertheless, our tour guide Jack was very informative and most importantly, c u t e !

 Then came the rocky area where we walked a flat land before reaching the base of the glacier. Looks near? It's actually some 3km away!

 Lots of information on the history and formation of this natural landscape.

 It seemed like forever to reach the base of the glacier.

 Someone got impatient yo.

 Crossing a little stream was like a breath of fresh air. Speaking of which, the air was super fresh and crisp here. None polluted watsoever.

 The erosion of rocks produce the most amazing looking work of nature. How I wish I brought me back a rock or two.

At one point, there were many long-flowing waterfalls crashing down to the grounds we stood on.

 Finally we reached the best part of the walk - Icy Blue Glaciers.
Don't they look just surreal?!
The reason  it looked so blue was due to very high water condensation in a specific area.

 We were very lucky to see a kea on the foot of the glacier hills. According to Jack, this happens to be the smartest parrot in the world. He once left some food in his backpack and this little birdy was extremely clever to dig into his bag to retrieve the food.

 One for the album.

 That's as far as we got - anything further and everything might come crashing down on us.

 Stunning shot of the rocks and the guy, of course. :P

 Told ja Jack was c u t e!
Bearded, but still cute.

 One thing we discovered though was that if you go for the Valley Walk (the simplest of all the tours), you do not really need to sign up for the guided tour (like what I did over the Internet). This I found out, upon seeing other visitors/ tourists walking amongst us without any guide tagging along. Apparently this place was opened to the public, except if you wana try the ice climbing.

Could have put our dollars to better use actually......

but at least I got to feast my eyes on Jack.