After an easy day in Queenstown to rest our weary legs we continued north up to the West Coast region of New Zealand to visit the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. The two glaciers are an impressive sight as they descend from the Southern Alps to less than 300 metres above sea level. The near-vertical rock walls of the glacial valleys are equally as impressive and we enjoyed walking along the valley floors to within about 100 metres of the glaciers.
Looking at our photos it would appear that the two glaciers are the same ... but they are not. They are about 20km apart. The key way of telling the difference between the two is that Mark is wearing a white t-shirt at Fox Glacier and a black t-shirt at Frans Josef!
On our last day in New Zealand we took a knife-making class. This was clearly Mark's idea, but turned out to be a great day of forging, grinding, rubbing-down and then polishing the steel blade as well as forming a handle from timber and brass. The end results look fantastic and will almost certainly be used when we get back to England. Be warned - if you come for dinner, you must comment on how beautiful the knives are!!
For lunch we relaxed by throwing axes, as you do!
We then headed to Christchurch for our flight back to the Australian summer in Sydney.
That is so cool guys .. Knife making followed by some really hep medieval action .. hehe .. throwing axes .. damn, u guys are lucky !!
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