Anyway, back to spring break. Last time I wrote I believe I left off at the end of our time in Christchurch. After Christchurch, we were off to Fox Glacier. We took the TranzScenic train through the mountains to Greymouth. On the way, we got some beautiful photos of the scenery. After arriving in Greymouth, we took a bus to Fox Glacier. Agaian, we took some photos of the scenery. It's just too bad I don't have any personally, because somewhere along the route to Fox Glacier, my camera grew some legs and walked away. I've stolen a couple of photos from Facebook though.
Fox Glacier is a quaint little town of about 250. It gets almost all of its business from tourism. The nearest town is Franz Joseph, which is a town of about 400. Both towns have glaciers. The two towns also have a sort of rivalry going on, with both claiming their glaciers to be the best. But anyway, the hostel we stayed in was, well, a hostel. Nothing fancy, but we had a room to ourselves and everything worked, so I can't complain.
That night, however, is when the drama began. We were going through our paperwork for our glacier hike the next day when we saw that we had to reconfirm our reservation for the hike 24 hours in advance, or we would lose our spot. Well, the 24 hour deadline had passed, but we called anyway and go their voicemail. While I was leaving the message, I noticed that our confirmation email had the wrong date for the glacier hike. I basically hung up without completing the message. They guy who's name the reservation is under called them again and explained the problem on the voicemail. Needless to say, we weren't happy that night cause it seemed we wasted $90 on a hike we weren't going on.
The next morning, we woke up early and called them as soon as they opened. They basically told us there probably was no chance of us getting a spot or a refund, but we could show up and take a chance. Well, obviously we were going to take a chance. Then we came across another problem. We were in the opposite city from where we needed to be. When we booked the hike, it mentioned a shuttle to the place, but in actuality, there was no shuttle. We couldn't walk either as it was too far a walk. Well, luckily, a man overheard us talking and offered to give us a ride for $40. We took it.
Well anyway, we got to the hike place, and the lady at the counter said she was able to book us into a hike, but then she saw that there were 4 of us. Apparently, the booking company only told them that were 2 of us. Well, we waited, and then finally she got us into the first hike of the day. That left us little time to get all of our gear and head out. In the rush of the morning, we had forgotten to pack anything for lunch, so we went without lunch for the day.
But anyway, enough of the negatives, the hike was awesome. We elected to go in the fast group (though Nathan and I had to convince Charlie), which in retrospect, was probably the best choice. We got to see more in the fast group. Our guide was Nikki. Here's a pic of her with Nathan:
The scenes were unbelievable. Franz Josef glacier, which is the one we hiked on, and Fox Glacier are both unique in the fact that they are both surrounded by rain forest. Ice and rainforests, not a common thing to see together. But anyway, I can't really do any justice describing the hike, so I'll just give you the photos.
After the glacier hike, we had no way to get back to Fox Glacier, so we went around trying to bum rides off of people. Finally, we found the gas station attendant who agreed to take us all back for $20 a person. Expensive, but at least we got back.
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