Ruben Adams

What can I say, a very surreal day (rhymes). We started the day off with a boat ride along the tasman glacial lake where we got to touch some icebergs and drink/eat water that's over 400 years old as we just snapped some off. Over the last thirty years the glacier has retreated by 6km and the lake didn't exist which is pretty crazy. The glacial wall is roughly 30-40m high with another 250-300m below the surface and at its deepest point it's over 600m deep! After the boat ride we had lunch sitting on the grass looking at some hanging glaciers and heard a bit breaking off which sounded like a massive clap of thunder, we didn't see it unfortunately as I think it was in the other valley. I was thinking about the helicopter tour because we might only be here once and it looked good, I was umming and arrrghing for a while until dad said just go for it. There was a flight at 2:30pm and it was 1:50 when we decided so we rushed to the hotel to see if there was a spot available. The lady behind the desk rang up and said that the specific package I had enquire about wasnt available (ski plane and heli all I one) however there was a 45min heli-hike that was available and that they would lower it down by $100 to match the price of the other trip. So we drove like mad men to mount cook airport to book it. When we arrived and paid the lady behind the counter asked mum and dad if they wanted to go as there were two spots left still ( I was originally just going to go on my own) which they declined. The woman the asked again and said at no extra cost, which they declined again.... until they realised what she had said. FOR FREE!! To which they agreed immediately before realising what they had actually got themselves into. So we were all going! And had saved $1100!! The flight was incredible as we flew up along the tasman valley, alongside the lake and then landed at the top of the glacier!! The flight was equally incredible on the way back down and we saw the mist dangerous glacier of all which moves at roughly 6m per day! There were also some climbers that we saw and even the top of mount cook so we were very lucky. I think I'll need a few posts to share all of the pictures I took. OH AND to top it all off we saw a black stilts chick when leaving the airport which are critically endangered, only 100 alive including the ones in captivity. So we were very lucky the whole day.

Figure 1: all three of us infront of the helicopter
Figure 2: tasman lake
Figure 3: the fast moving glacier
Figure 4: plateau where we saw some climbers
Figure 5: fast moving glacier again
Figure 6: the heli and IEn savoir plus