I waited two days for the best weather to do a helicopter hike up to the Franz Josef Glacier. The first day we arrived there, we did a 1.5 hour return hike to the bottom of the glacier viewing point. It was quite a beautiful walk in itself to see the glacier from about 250m away. But the clouds as you'll see were too dense to fly in so I waited until another day to do a heli hike. The next day I was lucky enough to have perfect weather as the helicopter flights get cancelled

Day one of Abel Tasman started at the Water Taxi parking lot. We walked about a mile into the park from the lot because that’s where the water taxi would drop us off at the end of the hike. Better to walk a little at the beginning than at the end with sore feet. We waited to start the hike until about 1 in the afternoon because there was rain in the morning. Luckily it cleared up to a beautiful blue sky by noon so we could get a good start on the first day’s hike (or tramp a