#TheRealityOfTravel

The present:
Here I am, sitting in the car with a hot mug of peppermint tea. Rain is slashing down on the windows and we can't see a thing out of the misty windows.

7am this morning:
When we woke up, I was excited to propose the idea of a glacier walk that my brother suggested and complete it with hot spring pools to heal our weary feet!

We trawled through TripAdvisor to look for the best options. As Berry has a bad knee, she was going to go in a helicopter with a snow landing and Dad and I were going to hike to the top, with snow boots and sticks to amble over the ice! How adventurous!

We phoned the ticket office as soon as they opened feeling nervous that the tours would be sold out. “Yeah! There’s no problem getting on the tour, you get about 1km away from the glacier.”
Oh! We looked at each other perplexed.
“It’s just that my brother did the tour before and they were able to walk on the ice,” I explained to the woman.
“Yeah, well since 2012 the glacier’s moved too much so you can only get there by helicopter!”

We decided that a three hour walk in the rain to maybe see the glacier wasn’t really going to work for us.
“We’ll also do the helicopter plan! It’s on my bucket list to go in a helicopter anyway so it’ll be great!”

Dressed for snow, we headed to Franz Joseph and made a booking for the helicopters.
“Yeah, so they’re not actually flying because of the weather. But if it clears they may be flying later today!”
“Well, while we wait, could we go to the hot pools?”
“Um...yeah, so the boilers broken, so we’ve had to close them too!”
Not so natural after all then!
To play it safe, we booked for a 4:30pm ride and looked up at the sky in hope as we saw some clouds were already obediently starting to clear. The tiny bit of drizzle had stopped as we reached a view sight for the Fraz Joseph glacier! “Looks clear enough to me!” I thought grumpily as I thought of our helicopter trip hanging in the balance. We took some beautiful photos of the shiny blue trail that shone through between two mountains.

Deciding not to waste the day waiting around for the weather to clear we decided to go to Fox Glacier to a beautiful lake called Matheson. Because I am travelling with my dad, of course the first stop was to get a coffee in the town. I was happy though because they had a gift shop full of tourist tat that I just can’t resist! Bagged myself a magnet and a NZ themed Christmas tree decoration. Holiday Win!

The cafe also doubled up as a booking centre for helicopter rides. As each hopeful group arrived to do their tour the poor staff members had to tell them that their ride was cancelled. Another look at the weather app told us that in a few hours those could be our sad and disappointed faces! Then Berry suggested that we reschedule our trip for first thing tomorrow morning where the weather looks better! Great idea! We easily moved our booking across just in time to beat another group of hopefuls who have also now re-booked for tomorrow.

Smugly, we left the cafe, walking past couples crying hysterically and yelling angrily at the sky, “Why god why?!”
It is possible that I made that up for dramatic effect but I’m sure that’s how they felt on the inside!

It was a shortish drive to the lake and we parked up, geared up and headed off to start the walk. The path led us straight to a rainforest, tall ancient trees covered in moss stood over us as we plodded along the trail. An opening in the path led us to a glimpse of the lake, it’s still waters displayed the reflection of everything around it to the very smallest blade of grass protruding the water.

We kept on going to the first view point, here we could see the entire lake surrounded by forest and mountains. The reflection covered almost all of the lake as a rotated view of mountains, trees and clouds rippled very slightly in the water.
We asked a guy to take a photo of us and Berry was less than impressed when he had focused more on our feet than the view

surrounding us.

In the forest we came across the most unusual tree. One large trunk connected two huge branches like giant Siamese twins. I enjoyed testing out my photography skills as I found various plants and leaves to take arty pictures of! A bit of drizzle padded on our heads but most of the time we were dry and happy. “Looks like a good spot for a selfie!” Suggested my dad.
We huddled together. Click.
“It’s too blurry!” Complained Berry.
I shuffled around to get closer to the camera when suddenly my foot slipped and just one of my legs fell down a hole!
“Help!” I yelled in distress!
I looked down to assess if there was any damage and was relieved to see that my leg was still attached. Laughing hysterically, and after taking numerous pictures of me, they eventually decided to pull me out of the hole.

“Let's go see Fox Glacier next and we can eat our lunch at the view point!”

And now I bring you back to the present.
As we got in the car, the heavens opened and the rains came pouring down. We looked out of the car window and watched as an enormous cloud slid like a curtain over our view of the glacier. The car is all steamed up and now, here I am, tim tam in hand, staring into the condensation covered window and sipping my tea, the dreams of glaciers and hot spring pools dwindling in my mind when.
“I saw a hot spring when we were driving in here!”
We pulled over to the spring, rain still lashing down. I sprinted to the spring, dipped my hand into the luke warm water!
Behold! My glacier and hot spring experiences from today!