'From Bad To Worse'

That's how the weather was today.

We stayed overnight at the small beachside town on the West Coast called Hokitika and it rained on and off all night.

Our plan today was to go for a glacier walk at either Frans Josef or Fox Glacier. Stopped in at the information centre at Frans Josef for the lowdown today. No glacier walks today at Frans Josef, only Fox Glacier where we booked ourselves in for the guided half day hike.

We all met at the Base Station at 1:30pm and kitted ourselves out with extra layers of clothes, gloves, walking boots, beanies, waterproof overpants and jackets, cramp ons to walk on the ice. Jumped on the bus and headed out to the starting point about 5km out of town.

As we started walking the weather slowly started to close in, the rain was getting heavier, the wind was gusting, but I felt well equiped and was really enjoying being out in the elements. The tour bus split into 3 seperate groups of 11 people each. Our guide's name was Scott, a young Kiwi guide who was very knowledgable and helpful.

After about an hour walk to get to the edge of the glacier, we stopped and strapped on the cramp ons to our boots. From that point on we spent the next hour walking on the ice, exploring ice caves and learning lots about the local glaciers. I was surprised to learn that New Zealand has over 3000 glaciers.

Just as we were getting ready to start heading down off the snow the weather really turned nasty. We found ourselves in heavy hail hitting us in the face, howling winds of over 100km hour where we had to hold on to each other and face our backs to the wind just to stay on our feet. Then lightning and thunder just to top off our outdoor experience to the max.

Dylan was walking up front holding Scotts hand having his own private chat with our guide. We were both very proud of how well he did. The minimum age to do the hike is 7, so Dyls just made it. Never heard a negative word from him for the whole walk, which was not exactly for the faint hearted. We had 2 river crossings to do over fast running rivers up to Dylan's knees deep and very rocky.

Once we were back on terra firma our guide advised us that if the weather had have been like that when we started off he wouldn't have allowed us on to the ice.

I felt extremely alive doing this walk and really glad we went even though I weren't that keen seeing the day's weather.

A memory that will last a lifetime.