WHO? Franz Josef, that's who!

The West Coast of New Zealand can pretty much be summed up, weather-wise, with one word; wet. Or maybe two; soaking wet. After a pretty relaxed and enjoyable 8 hour coach ride from QT, I arrived in Franz Josef, one of the two glacier "towns" on the west coast. The following day the plan was to hike up the glacier with a little help. After donning all the appropriate water-proof gear, crampons and the like we set off.

The Franz Josef Glacier. Quite hard to grasp the scale of the thing, but it was on the ginormous side of things, believe me.

The glacier is pretty rare as it is one of the only glaciers in the world to come down to rainforest and pretty much sea level. At the top the glacier gets between 12 and 15 metres of rain fall a year, that's about 3 times as much as the Amazon rainforest, but keeps it roughly on par with Manchester.

In parts the hike was a tight squeeze, passing through gulleys and crevasses. The guide would carve out steps as he went with a big pick-axe.

Most of the ice was dirty on the surface, but it was when you went deeper into caves that you saw the really blue stuff.

Although the rain didn't really let up much all day, we still managed to have a great time. Hiking with the crampons got easier as the day wore on and some of the ice formations we passed were quite special. An enjoyable experience!