Getting cold feet

Phase five! Our day of rest could not have been spent just goofing off, we chose to stop in this particular place so that we could make a full day hike on the second biggest glacier in New Zealand, Fox glacier!
So this morning we put on our very thin summer clothing and went to get a guide for the hike. A glacier is a very dangerous place because well... It's ice and ice is slippery.

Also, the surface is very broken, with crevasses and tunnels and holes, so a slip on the ice and you could fall many metres into a hole never to be seen again. That's why you need a guide, some crampons and then everything is way more fun and less risky.

The walk was quite long and we had to have lunch on top of the glacier. Obviously, as soon as you stop walking and climbing these hugue walls of ice, you start to get cold. And you cannot really do much about it, you arestanding on a 13 km long ice cube so it's only natural that you get cold feet.
In any case, the hike was very interesting, we saw lots of deep holes and tunnels in the ice but could not find any yeti, polar bear, penguin or even frozen mammoths.

So we spent our rest day not resting at all but it was a welcome change of pace from the cycling.
The next days are going to be very tough and long and maybe we will not have internet, expect us to repose in four days at the latest.
And for your information, I want to officially award Johnny the coveted Best Reader award, he's the only one regularly commenting and we know there are many more people reading. Thank you Johnny, you'll get a yet to be determined prize when we get back. To the rest: booo!

(edit from Josele) After the Glacier walk I went to walk around Lake Matheson with a US girl named Sarah we met during the walk. JL felt a bit tired so he stayed at the Lodge. Lake Matheson is a wonderful 3km. walk about an uber-beautiful lake; the water is so placid that it acts like a perfect mirror and on a cloudless day you can see the glacier reflected in the lake. I could not see it without clouds but it was easy to find a photo in a cloudless day. There were also many plants and birds in the track. I specially enjoyed the ferns, some of them reaching heights of 3-4 meters! My photos:

And this is a photo I found of a cloudless day in Lake Matheson. I found it in  http://www.stumpers.co.nz/photo-lake-matheson-west-coast.html