Franz Josef, Norman and Mount Roy

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Greetings from a slightly fitter Marc then when i last blogged. In the last few days we have braved the worlds most dynamic glacier, hot footed along the last stretch of the West Coast (bye bye huge beards) and seen Wanaka and now Queenstown.

So, firstly the glacier walk. After booking in for an early start we rose at 7pm and sleepily made scrambled eggs (again) and a had a much needed cup of tea before stubbling across the The Guiding Companies building across town. Our first job was to kit out in waterproof tops, bottoms, boots and crampons. After a quick introduction to the guides we started to meet and greet the others who would be on the trip as well. The most lively turned out to be a Venezuelan called Alex who enthused about engineering and the benefits to living in Australia on the 10 minute bus trip to the strat of the glacier. For those not up to speed on glaciers, they are basically big lumps of compacted snow that start life up in the mountians (notably Mount Cook and Mount Tasman) and slowly slip down valleys where lots of interesting things happen. The Franz Josef (named after the emporer of Austro-Hungary years ago) is a particularly dymanic chappy moving 10-20 meters a day at the top and between 1 and 5 meters a day at the bottom. This speed is pretty astonishing, attested to by the fact a plane that crashed into the top in the 40's was popped out of the other end a matter of a few years later. Anyway on getting to the termainal face (the bottom) we met our specific guide for the day - Nick - a likable Canadian, and were took up the first steep area using nicely cut ice steps (not such a glamorous job for the other members of the company). Then after 30 minutes climbing steps we were up to the real stuff and spent the next few hours peering down moulins (holes in the ice), tramping up crevasses, taking pictures of blue ice (ultra compacted snow), clambering through snow holes and slashing around mostly pointlessly with ice axes. Alex prooved to be particularly adept at this and could hardly walk two steps on the flat without carving out sizable chunks of rock. The whole experience was fantastic and although there was a bit too much waiting around while the guides cut steps for my liking we had a jolly good day and were suitably exhausted at the end of it. On the way down,as is often the case apparently, it decided to tip down with rain so we also had a healthy cold feeling as well. This all made the free curry soup our hostel provided and the free spa which we enjoyed for a nice long time all the better. The evening was spent drinking well earned beer and sleeping in an unfairly cold tent - boo.

Next morning we decided that Franx Josef had provided us with as much entertainment and as many spas as we could handle for the moment so we set off for stops at Fox Galcier (very similar to Franz but a little longer and a bigger hole at the bottom where all the water comes out) and Lake Matherson (coined 'reflection lake' on account of reflecting Mt Cook and the glaciers on a clear sunny day - we had niether of these things so i made do with a stroll with the surrounding plants while claire enjoyed her new addiction of Cappicino coffee). After a lunch of avacado sandwhichs (as a side note the kiwi fruit and avacados are reason enough for anyone to come to NZ) we headed on towards Wanaka where we inteneded to stay the night. Along the way while stopping briefly at Bruce bay we decided to pick up a hitcher on his way south. The general acceptance with hitching is that whoever you pick up should provide enough entertainment to wanrrent you picking them up. This definately proved the case the Norman. He had started off from a Maori funeral he had been attending in the north island at 2am the previous moring and was aiming to travel the whole country to Invercargill (very near the bottom). Anyway he was a facinating chap, a sheep shearer by trade, who spoke Maori, Scots gaelic, irish gaelic, welsh, japanese and english - with the intention of learning cornish !! and a whole host more. He also siad we were welcome to go and watch him shear if we are passing his farm and gave us endless yarns about fishing, linguistics, maori culture and life in the deep south. A real character. We finally arrived in Wanaka about 6pm and after some looking we checked into the YHA and spent the evening a following morning talking to women from a needleworking conference that was happening in town. One other interesting lady we met was 75, backpacking on her own and had sampled such delights as glacier walking, clubbling in Raratonga with 20 year olds and speed biking with 65 year old 'toy boys'.

Having decided it was time to do something wholesome and active, the following morninf we set off on what was meant to be a relaxed stroll up Mount Roy (overlooking Wanaka and it's lake). This turned out to be wishful thinking and for someone used to running up and down the lake and peak district like a madman, i dont mind saying i found it tough - very tough. The gradient was steep and it just went on and on and on. 2 hours of continuous climbing later (claire having given up on me to go down, then changing her mind nearly catching me up, then going down again) and a lot of puffing and panting i finally made it to the top to be greeted with thick cloud and rain - lovely. The view was...well i dont exactly know as i could bearly see my hand in front of my face, but i thankfully on the way down i did get to see the mist clear and when i was still at a reasonable height saw a perfect rainbow reaching from Wanaka town, across the lake and up to the top of the hill from where i had just come. On the way down i met with claire again and we enjoyed the very much easier way down and gave ourselves a well deserved coffee and cake as reward.

In the evening we decided that Wanaka wasn't captivating enough for us to stay another night and we headed out of town to a small backpackers sort of on the way to Queenstown - Phil's backpackers (i think the name dragged me there despite its woeful hostel rating). It turned out to be one of the best and worst thngs we've done yet. Being the only guests there we soon realsied our host was both slightly mad and an alcoholic, who told us stories of his farming exploits, rabbit hunting, hatred of his hostel body, all the while consuming beer and loosing more and more coherence.ace. When we finally looked upon it as a well furished pub we quite enjoyed our eveinbg there but it was certainly a bit spooky. Also to be fair he did provide us with lots of entertainment and a huge kiwi fruit pavlova (eagerly devoured by claire) and was deep down a nice guy..we think.

That just about brings you up to date again as the moring after that jam packed day we shipped towards Queenstown and arrived at the Hippo hostel and set up camp. I dont think there will be much high spending adrenelin fueled activities for us here, and we definately have half an eye on a prolonged stop in Dunedin where work will finally have to be done and monies earned. ah well, for this eveing more sociable drinking with random nationalities bekons. hoorah.

marc

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