Franz Joseph Glacier

Still feeling the after-effects of the night before we turned up to a ranch where we were taught all about the New Zealand art of deer-catching. Introduced by a guy from real country-New Zealand, with a sense of humour just like Ted from our Aussie outback tour, we were then shown a video accompanied by Top-Gun style music of people throwing themselves from helicopters onto the backs of deer in order to capture them for food and later for farming!

Officially that New Zealanders are nuts - most of the captures were taking place on the very edge of massive precipices of glacially-cut valleys. Imagine hanging on to the back legs of a deer whilst he tried to hop-away leaping from rock-to-rock along the edge of certain death and you've got the idea of this video.

Next-up it was JP's challenge to tame the wild boar...making sure he got him to sit before feeding him, and making sure he got out before the boar had finished his last mouthful or his legs would be next! Great family entertainment! This little shack also came complete with a collection of possums and a great little button which squirted water straight back in your face as Sam found out. Classic childish humour - we loved it!

After another long night of socialising and watching the New Zealand drivers performing the Haka, next morning it was time to go hiking the Franz Joseph Glacier. Initially we thought we were over-togged for the hike up there, stripping to our T-Shirts by the bottom of the glacier, but soon we were pretty glad of them. The hike was awesome (well at least the first 6 hours!) as we donned crampons and scaled slippery paths of the glacier, well-aware of the likelihood that we might just slip to our deaths in an icy cold pool of water! Extreme Danger said the sign!

Feeling particularly energetic Sam and I thought a wee 90s-boy-band-style pose would show-off our viscious-looking crampons...amazing how you can overbalance when farting about like that!

The climb took us up through the muckier ice at the base of the glacier, then through into ice which looked rather like a mint and chocolate ice cream scoop. After passing a bunch of people doing ice-climbing (I really wanted to but don't have a spare limb to sell), right at the top we hit the blue ice which was totally amazing.

Occasionally when the going got particularly tough, as we were the hardcore leading team, endowed with some particularly strong (and may I say handsome) men, we just said to hell with the glacier making us walk around and instead just cut right through the ice-mountains. Check-out my man-sized tunnel!!

In fact the boys all took a distinct liking to glacier-beating with our pick-axes. Amazing how manly it makes you feel to smash stuff and play golf with small pieces of ice over the mounds of the glacier! It seems though we took this a little too far when we were told in no uncertain terms that "the glacier is not the enemy". However, we'd done our research and knew in fact that it was...itself and the Fox glacier are taking over New Zealand at the rate of a couple of metres a year! Clearly the Kiwis were unaware of their own plight against the glaciers and the service the boys were doing them by averting their own impending destruction...well for a matter of a few more days at least!

What with saving New Zealand and our mission of an 8-hour hike around the glacier there was one way to round-off the day - a marathon session in the hot tub! Its amazing what supping on smuggled-in booze in the hot tub can do for aching bodies...first it soothes and then it gets them ready for yet another great night out at the bar apparently.