Day Eleven - From Glaciers to Antarctica

We went to sleep so late last night that it took me a little while to get up and moving, but we got to breakfast at the hotel around 6:30 and got something to eat before our flight. We packed a few things to stay warm and then headed to the meetup point for the glacier helicopter ride.

I had considered doing a long glacier hike, but given my persistent cold, we opted for a shorter adventure on the glacier. We met up with our guide, and I reassured him that I wasn’t going to have an asthma attack on the glacier (I mean…I can try?). We met up with another pair and did our safety briefing (“several things can kill you, don’t fall in a crevasse, pay attention to what you’re told”), and then did a short walk through the rainforest to our helipad.

Neither me or mom had ever been on a helicopter, so we were curious about how it was going to go. Mom and one of our other group members sat in the front with our pilot and me, our guide, and the other guy on the trip sat in the back.

We strapped in, put on our headsets and lifted off high above the rainforest. We swept over the glacier and the pilot remarked how perfect the weather was. It was so clear we could see Mt. Cook from the air and all the way down to the Tasman Sea. Just incredible. We sat down on the ice and got to walk around (carefully!) on the glacier and take some pictures.

The glacier has retreated far enough in just the last ten years that it’s no longer accessible by foot, only by helicopter, so we felt grateful to get to see it before it recedes further (or disappears). Just about when we were starting to feel cold, the helicopter returned for our trip back to town, and we got another amazing trip in the helicopter.

Once we landed and returned to the center, we bought a few souvenirs (tshirts!) and walked back to the hotel to pack up and check out. It only took us a few minutes and we were on the road again! It was another driving day as we needed to cover the five hours from Franz Josef down to Christchurch, and the road runs along the western coast of New Zealand and then down through the middle of the island through Arthur’s Pass. We had stocked up on some snacks yesterday so we were planning on only stopping for short pit stops along the way.

We drove up the coast and mom wanted to give driving on the wrong side a try, so I let her have the wheel for a bit while I did some snacking. She had driven an LLV with an inverted wheel years ago, so that part wasn’t as strange, but she did good driving on the other side of the road. We got to Hokitika, a gold rush down, and had a bit of a stop to look at the green stone (nephrite/jade) workshops. I got a necklace for myself and mom picked up a few things as well. We headed back to the car, got topped off on gas, and headed out again.

The town was cute, but the drivers nearly ran us over in the crosswalk, and the locals were just…rude.

And then we drove…for three more hours. We drove through Arthur’s Pass, a valley in between two mountains in central New Zealand. It was a wide-ish road. But the roads were also at insane inclines and had hairpin turns around nearly every bend. Beautiful country, but what a drive!

We made it to Christchurch at 3 pm and went directly to the International Antarctic Center, right across from where the US NSF team preps for their trips to Antarctica. We caught them an hour and a half before closing so we had just enough time to make it through everything. We did a trip inside to the Antarctic storm simulator first and we got to feel something like the temperature and wind changes that happen in a storm on Antarctica. It was ridiculously cold, but we had fun!

It was approximately very cold.

Next, we took a look at the penguins they have at the center and got to see them playing around and sleeping in their nesting boxes.

We are cute and prefer hopping adorably over swimming, thank you.

It was 3:10 so we needed to head outside for our hägglund ride next! Hägglunds are these specialized, heavy duty ATVs built for Antarctica and they’re sort of like tiny, watertight tanks. We strapped in and the driver took us over an insane obstacle course that had us holding onto the oh s#%& handles for dear life. It was crazy but so much fun!

After our ride we went through the rest of the museum and even got to pet on a few huskies that hang out in the sled dog area (they get to sleep the entire time and accept respectful pats, it was cute).

We picked up a few things in the gift shop right before they closed, and finally went in search of our hotel. It’s about 15 miles from the center/airport and we were able to find it pretty easily and got checked in. We emptied the car so we could repack for our flight and then went to hunt for some food.

There was a great Chinese restaurant a few blocks away and got some warm food, they had congee and youtiao so I had to get that, for my dumb cough. Christchurch has an insane amount of wind so it’s like walking around in a wind tunnel. A lot of the stores have sliding doors, that I assume might be so that they don’t get ripped off the hinges by the wind gusts. After having a great dinner we picked up some (deceptively huge) churros at Dominos and went back to the hotel.

Our flight is at 9:40 in the morning and we have to drop off the car so we spent some time reorganizing our bags and relaxing before bed. The last driving day is over and tomorrow we say goodbye to the South Island and go on to the North Island!