Glaciers aside (which are incredible), we thought Franz Josef as an area, offered less than our other stops to date. Approx 450 people live in the town, and every single aspect is centred around glaciers / ice. Of course our opinion of the area had absolutely nothing to do with the terrible weather that aligned perfectly with our stay.
The tent box had its first real test in Franzy J, the temperature dropped to 4 degrees, the rain was torrential and there was even some thunder and lightening to keep us awake which was ideal.
We found yet another steal on Bookme.nz and visited the Waiho hot tubs for a boiling hot bath in the middle of the forest. All the tubs are naturally heated from wood fire stoves, and a cold drinking water tap is your only means of regulating the temperatures. Paying little/no attention to the laminated guidance book, we slow cooked ourselves in the tub for 60 minutes at 43 degrees. With hindsight, and having had a google, this was (a) stupid and (b) explains why we felt quite sun-strokey and light headed for the rest of the day. Seeing as it was still very much pouring, we parked ourselves in the only open bar and just about managed to stay awake next to the fire (more heat lol) until dinner time.
The next morning, we’d only intended on doing the short walk to the Franz Josef lookout (which we did), however the day took a turn and we ended up doing a helicopter tour of the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. While Grace was grabbing coffees she mentioned she’d be keen so I ran into a heli tour centre to see if they had any availability. Full disclosure here, I’ve actually always had this weird fear of helicopters and would have happily given this a miss. Maybe it’s because they can’t glide? They had a spot and it felt like an opportunity too good to miss. Again with hindsight, I would have 100% passed on it.
With no time to second guess or back out, we were taking off in the chopper an hour later. The cloudy and spitty conditions made for a turbulent ride and the pilot really didn’t ease any nerves; he made sure to reiterate that all other helicopter rides were cancelled for the day so none were in the air and that we’d have to dodge under the cloud and back pretty quickly to get up close to the glaciers. As Slim Shady would say, palms sweaty arms spaghetti(hoops).
Although I think it’ll be Arron’s first and last helicopter ride, we have no regrets as we got front row seats to some big icy bois. I think the scale of the glaciers was the craziest part. What was seemingly a sheet of ice from down in the town soon became the most vast landscape. Passing helicopters looked like grains of sand, and insignificant features in the ice transformed into blocks of ice the size of buildings.
Welsh Rare-bits 
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