My first glacier

The drive up the South Island highway 6 was like nothing I've ever seen in my life. Unreal landscapes round every bend and through every window. The Great Ocean Road can't come close to this, except I'm sure it's warmer now and surfing is much more pleasant. We aim towards the coast and in a single days drive we take in rainforests, beaches, surfcoast, farming plains, undulating hills around endless bends, snowy mountains, waterfalls, gushing grey rivers and streams, culverts, lakes, plenty of cool looking one-lane bridges and the odd small town. Oh and two fricking glaciers!
Just in case you are unaware but glaciers are like huge ice rivers that slowly move through mountains, forming the landscape as they go. This ice is hard stuff and can, and does, change the shape of the rocks and mountains that it comes into contact with. It's pretty insane how accessible these places are too. You don't need a four-wheel drive car, you don't have to navigate snow covered mountains thousands of feet above sea level, you don't need to climb mountains for days, you don't even need snow chains on your tires. They're just down a side road of the main highway. You just pull up, after driving through a tropical forest(like there's a tropical forest near a ice cold glacier?! but there is). My brain really can't work this place out. So you get out of your car and walk 10 minutes and suddenly your at the foot of this huge mass of ice that's very slowly, about a centimetre a day, carving it's way through the mountains. It's flabbergasting. The glaciers look like a drawing from a distance and even up close it just feels strange. All around is bright grey cold looking rock and freshly carved sheer cliff faces. And then there's a tropical forest coming up behind. What's going on!?
Come here, you have to. You must.
The first glacier we see is called the Fox Glacier, maybe that's where Fox's glacier mints get their name? The small towns next to these glaciers get a large influx of visitors and are quite pricey as a result but what the hey, this is cracking.
Franz Josef is the next glacier and it's a fair bit larger and more impressive but both are fairly close to each other and worth the visit. At Franz Josef the ice reaches the top of the mountains and it looks like a huge ice river. Waterfalls and rivers gush powerfully and constantly down from the high peaks. All this is totally free and maintained by the council too. I love this place.
It's crazy how you can drive for two hours and see nothing but amzing scenery and absolutely no sign of life. New Zealand isn't even that big!
A cool thing about NZ is that they also have government run campsites that are either free or very cheap. We picked up a map and tried to find one to save on our spiralling costs. We couldn't and it was total darkness so we decided to camp overnight at a beautiful picnic stop. It was right next to a gorgeous lake and our new van had a large glass roof in the back to watch the stars. Pretty damn idillic stuff, and free! Is this the greates place on earth? There's no where else I'd rather be.
Right, next we have to drive from the East coast to the West coast in a day and end up in Christchurch. Easy.