Fox to Queenstown

Ok, back on a high- the blog's title may start to be making sense now, eh?

We woke up the day after the last entry to sweet sunshine, and even though we had a few showers, by the time we got up to Fox glacier it was dry and sunny, but with enough clouds to keep most of the glacier's surroundings blanketed in mystery. It made for spectacular views and a great walk up to the glacier, and some pretty dramatic scenery once on the glacier. Our guide was a Nepalese man who spoke with the heaviest Kiwi accent you can imagine (with some Nepalese left in some pronunciation, which made some of his anecdotes hard to follow, resulting in the smile-and-nod tactic on our -and most of the group's- part), but he was the life and soul of the arctic and very popular amongst colleagues, he got an offer for after work beers every time we ran into another group- we gather he was also a god drinking buddy :)He offered Daniel 10 beers if he took a dip in one of the glacier pools (an electric blue crevice that had no bottom as far as I could tell), which was declined much to the group's disappointment.

After the glacier we jumped in our van and shot over to Lake Matheson, which has incredible views of Mt Cook, Mt Tasman and the mountains surrounding them. It was a great walk- an ethereal forest, which we caught at the most beautiful time- just when the light was low and golden.

The next morning we started out for Queenstown, passing through Mt Aspiring National Park and then the Haast Pass, both of which were just one breathtaking view after another. There is no country like this one- it HAS to be the most beautiful place on earth. Neither of us can imagine there is anywhere that is this diverse, this spectacular... Watch out, we might just emigrate :)
We're now in Queenstown, which is the epicentere of any sport that is life-threatening and nervewrecking. If you can come up with an outdoor activity that involves putting your life on the line and getting your adrenaline PUMPING, you can make it big here... SO we're off to try something of the sort. We'll check into the blog again once we have our feet safely back on the ground!