We were bringing all our layers basically and Megan was super awesome and drove the first couple hours while I was useless and sleeping in the passenger seat. Luckily once she got tired I was ready to step in. The road from Wanaka to Fox Glacier goes through a bunch of mountains so unsurprisingly is windy and steep. Luckily, we were driving it so absurdly early in the morning that Megan saw the only other car driving that stretch and it let us make pretty good time.
We pulled in fifteen minutes late for our 8 am meet up, but they were cool about it and we managed to get fitted for all our gear pretty quickly. We had signed up for the all day ice climbing adventure. There is a lame "walk around the glacier" option, but the ice climbing only has 4 people to one guide and you also do ice climbing instead of just walking around. Obviously way more awesome. Once we were all set, we took the bus to the glacier area. 
There is about an hour walk to the glacier on which our guide, Andy, explained what we would be doing and where we'd be going and also gave us a history of the glacier. I didn't realize that glaciers go through cycles of receding and growing based on the weather. Up until 2005, the glacier had been growing and now it is receding slightly. Once we got up to the glacier, we put on our crampons, harnesses and helmets and got out our ice axes.
Andy spent an hour or so teaching us how to walk on the glacier with crampons since it is way steeper than anything on which we were used to walking. Once he was confident we wouldn't fall to our deaths in ice fissures, we headed out to the first climb that he had in mind. He said that the glacier is constantly changing so something that might be a good climb one week might have collapsed another week which makes guiding tough. He found us a good spot to get started and set up ropes for us. He did a great job of teaching us; first he explained the theory of what to do and then he gave us a demonstration of how to climb. The whole time we were on the ice he was giving us tips and explaining different moves we could use in various situations.
After we were getting up and down the first set of routes he had set up, we ventured out a little further and he set up a second set of routes. These were significantly tougher as the first routes had been at an incline while the new ones were straight up and one had a lip that you had to climb up and over. We still powered through them and once we had each climbed the routes a few times, he announced that he had found a moulin, a hole caused by water runoff. We took a break to eat lunch while he set up the ropes for the hole. 
After lunch we dropped down into the moulin and then climbed back up. It was awesome! Megan was worried about doing it at first, but once she dropped down, she was totally fine. We both climbed back out and were pumped about it. Then Andy said he had some serious climbs we could go to if we wanted. Luckily the other couple was awesome and agreed that we wanted to do them. We started walking and climbing up the glacier.
He said he knew of some sweet ice caves and after an hour or so we were able to find them. It was sweet walking through the caves, but a little disconcerting because he had told us how a lot of the glacier was unstable. We weren't huge fans of ice falling on our heads. He had also made sure to impress upon us that the ice boulders were very very heavy and that we shouldn't stand under them ever.
Afterwards, Andy found us a huge crevasse so we could drop down and climb back out. He set up the ropes again and I dropped in and started climbing. I did pretty well but towards the top, my forearms just gave out. I was so exhausted I had to wait for a while before finishing up the last bit. Afterwards, we all headed back. It was about an hour to get off the glacier and another hour to get back to our car. At this point we were all tired but we ordered a pizza to go, got gas and then drove back to Wanaka.
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