Brrrrrrrrrrr!

So I was in Franz Joseph where I did my glacier walk and it was so cold! But it was amazing for real, I loved everything about it except for the cold of course. I got some great pictures which I will upload to facebook soon. But words and pictures just dont do it justice, I cant even describe how pure and beautiful and amazing it was. I saw things that not many people get to see in a lifetime and I even got to drink pure glacier water!

When I first signed up for this it sounded expensive but it was worth every penny and it wasn't just a stroll thru the glacier as I thought. We actually did some real climbing with ropes and had crampons and climbed into ice caves and thru crevices but the views just made it all worth it. By the end of the day I was soaked and cold and tired but, I did pay for a glacier hot pool afterwards and it was the perfect cap off to a great day! It was a glacier fed pool that they heated to the perfect degree of hotness and you could stay in there as long as you wanted!

I also failed to mention something really interesting that we saw outside of Franz Joseph was "The Bushman's Museum" it was a museum started by a guy who first created "deer capture" in the 1970's. See, back in the 1800's and early 1900's they released deer into New Zealand just for sport hunting and really no other reason but by the 1950's and 60's the deer were so overpopulated they were killing a lot of the native trees and going into people's houses and stuff. So they started culling the deer and just killing them all. That was fairly successful but still not enough. So, they started using helicopters to hunt and kill deer and that was so successful that they ended up almost wiping out all of the deer totally.

Finally the govt realised that they should save some of the deer instead of killing them all so they used the helicopter to go and find deer and literally jump from the helicopter onto the deer and capture them it was pretty wild! Then this guy made a "net gun" system where he could shoot a net onto the deer and bring it down for capture. So eventually they had enough deer to actually start farming them for meat. So now there is over 35 "deer farms" in New Zealand where they just breed deer to kill for venison. The exports total over 260 million dollars a year! It is odd seeing deer everywhere in pastures/paddocks.

It was an interesting museum but, this guy who owned it he was really quite "politically incorrect" in a way it was refreshing to see someone who really didn't care what others thought about him and his views but, he did managed to offend a lot of people because he had complaint letters that he posted all over the walls along with his replies to the letters! He was quite a character. All in all I did enjoy the museum though. I am one day away from Queenstown so I will write more there after all my crazy canyon swing and adventure stuff!

Yall take care,Tyler