Glaciers--not a new DQ treat

We saw two glaciers today!  We went to Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier.  Walked through the rainforest (yes, walking through rainforest to get to a glacier) for 30 minutes the first one and 45 minutes for the second one.  Annie thought that it felt colder as we got closer to the glaciers.  The first one was earlier in the morning and it was very chilly out--three layers required.  By the time we got to the second glacier it was a bit warmer, so we could unzip our jackets and take our hands out of our pockets.  We took silly pictures with the picture of the forest service person (he warns you not to go any further and of all of the ways you could die from the glacier if you are stupid and go beyond the barricade).  They have signs (even in the bathroom stalls) warning you not to go beyond the viewing area--it doesn't matter if you came all of this way to touch a glacier (it tells you to ask the parents of the people that have died if it was worth it!).  So we didn't get to touch the glaciers but we got very close after walking through the rocky valley that the glacier had carved.  We got to see by markers how much the glacier had receded through the last three hundred years (it is a lot!).  The differing shades of green in the rainforest is amazing.  It also amazes me how moss and vines cover every available surface so that everything is green!  Today I saw little tiny vines with red berries trailing all over a rock wall--very beautiful!  Then, after walking through every imaginable shade of green, you step out into a valley of rock.  Gray, black, white, blue, dark purple, and orange.  We even had to walk across rocks to cross streams (another thing the forest guy warns about--the stream can change in several hours from almost dry to flooding--several feet high).   We came back to the hostel for a late lunch (after making our "donation" to the community at the local grocery store).  Then the children decided that they would like to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening hanging out at the hostel playing games, reading, etc.  Last night we spent a nice evening in front of the fire in the common room eating a pizza and and fish and chips we picked up in town, then playing New Zealand Pictionary.