On Cracking Glaciers and Snow-Covered Mountaintops

Day 190

I have a confession to make: I let my mom plan our entire New Zealand trip because, as a friend of mine from home once put it so eloquently, when it comes to travel I am “unbelievably lazy.”

You know how I just kind of happen to wander and base my next move on whatever travelers in my current locale tell me to see?  That usually works out pretty well, and that’s how my contribution to the trip, Waiheke Island, happened to come about.  Other than that, though?  Yeah, I didn’t plan a thing. 

It turns out that I put my faith in the right hands, though, because my mom did a fantastic job by picking Franz Josef Glacier for us to visit during our time on the South Island. Though she had seen glaciers from her geophysicist days, I had never in my life seen one before.  I am a Californian after all, we don’t really have them in my home state. 

You guys, I didn’t know what I had been missing:

There are two main glaciers in the area: Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers.  One has a few options for getting up close and personal with them – hike right on up (as we did in this case), hike directly on the glacier, or fly over it.

We also chose to fly over it, so that we could see this:

And this…

And a little more of this:

For about 40 minutes via helicopter, we circled the glacier and various surrounding mountain tops, seeing the glacier from a different point of view.

In total, we spent 3 days getting up close with the glaciers, enjoying the intense blues and beautiful surroundings.

Turns out that this time, planning wins.

In the spirit of full disclosure: We were treated to the helicopter tour by Heliservices NZ who did not request that I write a favourable review or comment on the blueness of New Zealand in general. All opinions are my own.