We got to Franz and ended up staying in the same hostel as the irish lads. Franz is just another small township, very similar to Fox. They seem to have a big rivalry as they're only 25 km's apart and both think their glacier is better!
That evening we treated ourselves to dinner out. Vik had sausage and mash while Luce and Rach both had empanadas- turns out to be a chilean dish!
In the monring we headed down to the glacier centre where you go to get kitted up for the hike. We got lovely trousers, rain jacket, gloves, hat, boots, socks and crampons (the things you put on your boots when walking on ice). It's safe to say, we were once again looking good! Everyone jumped on the bus (about 44 people) which took us to the edge of the glacier. It was about an hours walk to the actual glacier, this turned out to be the hardest part of the walk! As the river was high we had to climb up and over the mountain and back down, after a lot of huffing and puffing we made it over to the other side where we had to walk a little further before putting our crampons on to get on the ice. Here we were split up into groups of 11 with one tour guide each. Being the fit girls that we are we opted to go in the last group- the easy one!!We spent a few hours walking on the ice before stopping for lunch. It's really hot while you're walking but when you stop it suddenly becomes very cold! As we stopped Thomas, the tour guide for the third group radiod our tour guide to ask for help opening up a crevasse. After what seemed like forever waiting in the cold they said it was ready for people to climb through. It was realy narrow though, and a few people who tried had to turn around and come back out. Luce and Vik didn't want to try getting through, but Rach tried and managed to get through! It was side to side all the way, but definately worth it. It was bright blue in the middle! Another highlight of the day was walking through a cave in the ice, this was also bright blue. Really really pretty. After seeing this we turned around and started to head back down to the bottom. It was amazing how high we had actually climbed in a short space of time. After our 7-8 hour hike we were all completely knackered so again treated ourselves to dinner before heading to bed. I don't think any of us have slept so well since being away!
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