Fox Glacier Mince

We're in glacier country. So, I did what you do in such places, strapped on my third pair of crampons of the trip and did some yomping over the Fox glacier. I'd like to say that we chose Fox because it's less mainstream or more picturesque, but really I just thought there was more pun potential with Fox than Franz Joseph. Either way the whole glacier into rainforest thing hit all the right geography geek buttons and it provided me with ice tunnels - a promise which Patagonia never delivered on.

We stayed in Christchurch for a couple of days (good art gallery, mediocre art) then crossed the South Island at Arthur's Pass. We stopped at a viewpoint and had to stop keas eating the seal on the windscreen - the rotters. We swung by pancake rocks (it's a misnomer - the rocks look like pancakes, they're not made of pancakes. Rubbish) before trying to stop at the (near legendary) Blackball Hilton. Fi vetoed it as she didn't want to be the only lady in a desolate frontier town full of gnarled prospectors, which is a shame as I reckon I could have traded her in for three seives and a really good shovel.