Day 283-284: “And I'm freeeee, free-falling”

The day spent bumming around the hostel in Fox Glacier had worked; now the sun was out and we were ready to see the glacier itself. Conveniently it's only 5km out of town and easily accessible by road so we drove along and did a few of the short walks that showcase the ever-retreating Fox Glacier itself from a few different angles.

For obvious safety reasons, you can't just go up to a glacier and have a look around and so marked paths keep everyone but the guided tour groups quite far away. It was still spectacular though – and to see the valleys and river beds that it had carved through solid rock in the glory days of the last ice age was pretty impressive too.

Onwards we drove to a bigger and (arguably) better glacier just up the road at Franz Josef; the town is certainly more lively and it holds the prestigious (?) title of the worlds 2^nd best site for sky diving. I never know if being certified 2^nd best at something is actually a compliment...in this case it's second place to sky diving at Mount Everest, and anything that's second to Earth's highest peak can't be too shoddy I guess. But I digress; Rob had been talking-up sky diving at Franz Josef for the best part of this trip and – at least for the first two minutes of our time in the sky dive shop – I was still convinced that because I'd sky dived in Australia before, I wouldn't need to this time.

It didn't last and here, after a mornings will-we-won't-we with the clouds and the wind speed we made it up in the tiny plane and jumped out at 16,000 feet...

Rob's video has been miraculously saved from the depths of the interweb, so here it is in all its extremely-nervous-but-trying-to-stay-cool glory:

Kat's fear and flapping cheeks are available for viewing here:

And it was absolutely amazing! The views in the plane going up were worth it alone – we could see see Mount Cook and Mount Tasman (2 highest peaks in NZ) poke out over the clouds, and the Franz Josef Glacier with it's network of cement-coloured rivers reaching to the sea. It was magnificent. It was breath-taking at 4,00 feet and then we just kept. on. rising, until it was eventually time to swing our legs over the edge of a flying aircraft and go for it.

Nothing can really describe the exact feeling of falling at terminal velocity – a cool 200km/hr – but I think the look on our faces before, during and after sort of capture it...

Luck has really been on our side throughout this trip; it seems that we always somehow manage to time stuff like this to perfection and as we watched our vidoes back and dark clouds rolled in we knew we'd had the best jump of the day and one of the best experiences of this whole crazy year.

And maybe – just maybe – for the faint of heart, this'll be the last time we insist on showing you footage of Team 365 falling from massive heights :)

281-282: Beautiful West Coast / Bastard sand flies

In 1990 the whole of the South West of New Zealand's South Island was recognised as a World Heritage Site, putting it in an elite with the likes of the Pyramids in Egypt and the Grand Canyon in the US. I'm not sure if it is the biggest World Heritage site (feel free to google and report back) but it has to be up there, surely. I mean – it's huge. We have already visited parts of it at Mount Cook and Milford Sounds but now we were joining the highway that winds all the way up to Nelson.

Out first port of call was the pretty little town of Haast; we started the day with a Whitebait Pattie for Rob (local speciality) and a visit to another very well done Visitor Centre. It seemed we had landed, all quite deliberately of course, at a great place for some walks on a day when the sun was shining – which is actually pretty rare in these parts.

So we followed the coast up, stopping at picturesque trails, bays, river mouths, forests and even a “swamp” where the high levels of Iron in the rocks had rusted and turned the water the colour of ale; we haven't fiddled with the settings on these photo...it really is that colour.

It was all going rather well until it came to settling down for the night and the lovely lake-side spot we'd found turned out to be swarming, and by swarming I mean literally infested, with sand flies. It was turning into a beautiful sunny evening but there we were with trousers tucked into socks, long sleeves, scarfs, constant re-application of repellent and we were still twitching and having to wave our arms around like crazy folk to try and defend ourselves. It was awful; I'm not sure if I got my moan on about them in the Milford Sounds post (just checked...I didn't) but if we thought they were bad then (and we did) this was something else.We set up a mosquito net over Emilio's door but it was soon coated in little black bodies, baying for our blood – and when they do bite, they do draw blood. Not the best night's sleep ever.

When we got up in the morning and let about 100 new hungry mosquitoes and twice as many sand flies into poor Emilio, it was time to leave. We were tired, bitten and it was raining with no sign of stopping. We drove to Fox Glacier and checked into a hostel where we enjoyed such luxuries as hot showers, a kettle (AKA constant source of tea for me), comfortable sofas, electricity and the real luxury of a sauna. It was R&R o'clock and as the continued to pour outside we knew it was the right decision.

Only a few pics for this one...and they are here