Prelude to a Curse

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It was sitting and waiting for the bus that afternoon when I met aforementioned Aussie Kat. She too was waiting for the Stray bus (the name of the bus “tour” we were taking) and after talking for a few minutes we both realized, much to my relief, that neither one of us really had a clue as to how this bus pass thing worked. Well, at least I wasn’t the only one! Our bus finally showed up and as it approached Kat said the very thing that was rolling through my mind. “Is he even old enough to drive?!?” Through the front glass I saw a skinny kid with long, curly surfer blonde hair, growing scruff and wearing an oversized hat turned slightly to the side. He looked about 12. As he got off to help us with our stuff, the image did not improve. An oversized shirt, acid-wash skinny jeans and no shoes. Fantastic. And to top it all off, his name was Python. I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to. The rest of the bus was lacking the….shall we say character, of our driver. Or to put it more bluntly, we had stepped on to the short bus.

Anyhow, we made our way to Franz Josef to go climb a glacier. We got to the tour desk and watched a five minute video with a tan, shorts clad Kiwi hiking around the glacier in the sunshine looking like he could skip up the thing in an hour and throw us all a picnic. If you don’t see the foreshadowing here then, well, I am a terrible writer. But we will get back to that. We check into our hostel with another girl from our bus, clean up and decide to do what we do best. Hit the bar. Because, as Python tells us, nothing cures a hangover liking climbing up a giant chunk of ice. Plus, there is literally nothing to do in Franz Josef except drink and walk around on a glacier.
I did manage to stay relatively sober despite some enormous peer pressure and early the next morning Kat and I set out for the glacier tour with snacks and water and our cameras in plastic bags. They have told us to wear 3 or 4 layers so I have on my tee shirt, thin black zip up jacket and warm zip up jacket. We layer up in their waterproof pants, waterproof boots, waterproof hooded coat, two layers of wool socks, hat and gloves and head on the bus to the glacier. And there is where I will leave you. You will just have to wait for the next installment to see how glacier hiking goes! Cheers!

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