Glaciers and Hot Tubs

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After all the Barrytown shenanigans we luckily weren't leaving until about 12.30pm so we all got a desparately needed lie in. When I did get up to go for a shower the first thing I saw when I walked out of our room was Steve's red high heels from the night before sitting neatly outside his room...class.

Unfortunately the clouds had rolled in the night before and just as we were all loading our bags back onto the bus it started raining and it was a sign of things to come as that day we were heading for the town of Franz Josef, home of the Franz Josef glacier and one of the wettest places in New Zealand, it gets at least 2 to 3 times as much rain as Edinburgh per year....not a nice thought.

Damon, the kiwi guy who had greeted us in Franz Josef with a water pistol and who had stripped off the night before in the bar and wandered around with just an apron on for most of the night was hitching a ride with us back down to Franz Josef as he works in one of the bars down there. I have to say of all of us he definitely looked the worst for wear I've not seen eyes that blood shot since I last wandered around Amsterdam.

As we continued south towards glacier country the weather got steadily worse and worse and the rain got heavier and the sky greyer. We didn't make many stops as it was such a miserable day with one big exception, we stopped at the most surreal and weird place I might ever have been called The Bushman's Centre in the middle of nowhere out in the country where men are men and sheep are scared, and so they should be! The guy who runs the centre jumped on the bus when we arrived and gave the best sales pitch I've ever heard for his Bushman Museum which only cost a couple of dollars so of course we all couldn't resist it and headed in. We were treated to a 10 minute film about how they used to catch the deer in the area that were overrunning the local land and destroying all the natural wildlife, these guys used to literally fly around in helicopters over hills and mountains a few feet above the ground and leap out of the helicopters onto the deer to bring them down and take them in to farms! The best thing about the film was the choice of soundtrack......Kenny Loggins "Danger Zone"...apparently Top Gun stole the idea for using that song from the bushman!

We were also treated to the delights of possum pie for whoever was brave enough to taste it (not me, it didn't smell that appetizing & we'd just seen some live possums in cages in the museum so I couldn't possibly eat one after that), apparently possum isn't particularly tasty but isn't awful...a few of the biys tried it. There was also a very large pig in the centre which was partial to white bread which one lucky guy from our bus got to feed it, rather him than me the thing was huge.

There was also a model of a giant fly outside of the centre on the wall and inside there were "photos" and the story of how they caught this giant sandfly (the bain of everyones lives in the South Island in New Zealand, I think they are actually more annoying than mosquitoes as insect repellents don't seem to discourage all of them & you can actually feel the little suckers bite you and it hurts!), strange but apparently true...hmmmm.

When we arrived in Franz Josef the weather was worse than ever it was absolutely pouring down and it was really cold. We all ran to our rooms once we'd checked in and headed to the bar for something to eat once we'd dried off a bit. Me and Lisa were in the same dorm room and were planning to have a quiet night like everyone else so we went to the tiny TV room in the hostel to chill out but there were no seats and there was nothing exciting on TV so we thought we'd go back to the bar for just one drink as we had nothing else to do....note to self it is never a good idea for a Scottish girl and an Irish girl to go to a bar without anyone looking after them for "just one drink"....never going to end well now is it.

Of course we both lived up to the Scottish & Irish reputations and as we met up with Fido and a couple of the other Stray bus drivers, who had already been there for one night as we stay in Franz Josef for 2 nights so we catch up the bus in front, and one drink turned into 2, which turned into 3, which turned into shots & I'm sure you get the rough idea. Even Damon who had the night off from working in the bar had somehow recovered from his hangover to beat all hangovers and was back drinking and stripping off in the bar again (it's the bar he works in so they're probably used to it & didn't even bat an eyelid when he was stripped down to the tightest pair of boxer shorts I've ever seen in the middle of the bar). Anyway me and Lisa ended up in the bar until it closed at 2am and then we ended up in the secret staff hot tub hidden at the back of the hostel reception until 3am when we decided it was too hot & ran back across the courtyard inthe rain, in our bikins....we must have looked ridiculous! We were then the worst roommates ever as we banged around and whispered and giggled for about another hour until we fell asleep.

The alarm went off the next morning at 7am as me and Lisa had booked ourselves onto a half day walk on the glacier which left at 8.15am....maybe not the best idea to stay out until 3am the night before. We dragged ourselves out of bed and made our way along to the Glacier centre to get kitted out with our waterproof gear, hats, gloves, walking boots and spikes for walking on the glacier. We also had to sign a disclaimer form to say that we were suitably fit to walk on the glacier and were not under the influence of alcohol or any other substance....we sboth signed although I'm pretty sure most of the vodka from the night before was still running round my system. Once we got outside though and began the walk to the glacier we both woke up a bit & the ice cold fresh air refreshed us both and we felt good to go walking on the ice. The glacier is an amazing sight, it is absolutely vast. When you first see it it looks so close and our guide asked us how long we thought it would take to walk to the face of it, most of us thought it would take about 15minutes as it di look that close but it would actually take us an hour to walk to it, it's so huge that it gives the illusion of looking so much closer than it is. Because of all the rain the melt waters from the glacier were really full and running really fast along side us as we walked up to the glacier. Luckily for us we had a good day for doing the walk as it hardly rained at all and by the end of the walk the sun was even starting to come out.

When we got up to the face of the glacier it looked even more vast and made me feel tiny. We got our spikes on & began walking up the pre-cut track in the ice up the face of the glacier. It's actually hard work walking on the ice as you have to kick your feet into the ice with every step so you don't slip and slide all over the place, although on some of the steeper parts of the path there are ropes to desparately cling on to as you climb up. We got to spend about an hour, an hour and a half actually on the glacier, climbing up and going through some ice tunnels before climbing back down. It was enough to give you a feel for the power and sheer size of the glacier and just as we were getting back down to the bottom we heard this thunderous crack and bang, it was a lump of the glacier falling off into the melt river below.

We headed back into town and to the hostel to get some hot soup and a hot shower to warm us up and have a well earned rest for the rest of the afternoon. That night we only had a couple of drinks in the bar (yes it was actually only a couple) as it was one of the girls from the bus, Anya's birthday. Me and Lisa didn't last too long thanks to the previous night so we headed to bed for a reasonably early night before getting back on the bus the next day to continue heading ever southwards.

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