Written back at Mission Bay, Auckland, still trying to catch up. I think I left off with us on our way to the Franz-Joseph glacier, so I'll pick up the threads from there.

We stopped at a decent little B&B at Franz-Joseph, after a very wet and windy drive. The next morning it had cleared and the sun was out, though still cold and we decided to do our walk up to the glacier. It's about a thirty-minute walk from the car park to the glacier, or as close as we were allowed to get to it, the whole thing is on the move all the time and huge lumps of ice and rock are constantly breaking off the leading edge. Snow falls up on the mountains and compresses under its own weight to form ice that moves downhill, behaving as a plastic solid and getting broken up and contorted in the process. At the leading edge melt-water pours out of an ice-cave, which can be seen in the picture. What the picture can't do, however, is give any idea of the scale of the glacier, it's immense. Just after we started the walk back to the car park it started to rain again, very heavily and we got soaked, but so what?

The pictures show Anne, on the path to the glacier and Anne at the Pancake Rocks.

Anne has just reminded me that on the way to Franz-Joseph we crossed two long, single-track bridges. Nothing strange about this; nothing except that the track is shared by railway trains, that is, you actually drive on the rails (which are close-boarded).