Franz Josef and Wanaka

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Franz Josef and Wanaka Blog

Howdie folks, Sam here again. I hope you all enjoyed Laura’s blog.

Punakaiki was indeed very beautiful. The sea was ferocious and the state of the rocks jutting out into it reflected this ferocity. There is something quite wondrous and gripping about a rugged coastline - you can’t quite take your eyes off it.

Anyway, enough about that place - we have moved on!

As Laura mentioned, we arrived in Franz Josef in appalling weather, meaning that we could see nothing of the surrounding hills and mountains. This put our heli-hike (a helicopter ride followed by a landing on the glacier, and then a 2 hour trek on the ice before being taken off the glacier by helicopter) in serious doubt. The weather forecast for the following day (Saturday) was more positive than negative, but still not great. Our first evening in Franz Josef was spent eating the hostel’s free soup (nothing to write home about - which is peculiar considering that I am), and then in the evening we wandered the TINY town to see what was going on. The answer was a very definite ‘not much’. There was one bar that was rather busy and had some rugby on, so we had a few drinks in there to warm us up. Laura had a glass of red wine and her back to the rugby - her ideal night out. The bar was serving the most enormous portions of food either of us have ever seen before. Entire cows were coming out of the kitchen - and returning to the kitchen barely touched. My favourite moment had to be the plate being returned to the kitchen loaded with untouched vegetables. Having eaten merely watery soup for dinner, the gluttonous appetites of the bar’s clientele were nothing compared to my own. Wisely, however, both myself and Laura contended ourselves with the thought of that apple waiting for us in our room...

We were supposed to do the heli-hike at 10.30 the next morning, but this never happened. The mountains were covered by low cloud and showed little signs of shifting. We were pushed back to the afternoon, but this didn’t go either. We had, however, already opted out of it by this point, and in light of the fantastic weather forecast for the following day (Sunday), we decided to do it then. Consequently, we spent our afternoon and evening walking in the woods, reading by the wood-burning fire in the hostel, and eating some more tasteless hot soup. We went to bed thinking about clear skies and sunshine.

Upon awakening, I wiped the condensation from the window with the curtain (I should have used Laura’s pillow) and was greeted with clear blue skies. Because we had somewhat tired of our eggs and rice crackers breakfast routine, on this day, the day of days, we chose to go for breakfast at the infamous bar of enormous portions. Indeed, we were not disappointed with our choice.

So this left us sick and bloated prior to our big trip, but with time the excitement countered such feelings. We were in a group of 9, and after a quick briefing in the office, it was off to the boot room. On went the comedy waterproof garments and boots, before we received a 30 second mumbled safety talk, which can be summarised as follows: “don’t walk into the helicopter’s tail rotor”.

And then off we went to the helicopter. Getting in whilst the blades were spinning wasn’t the easiest thing, but it would prove to be rather easier than getting out. Laura managed to wangle the front seat next to the pilot, whilst I got a window seat on the row behind. The group couldn’t all fit in one helicopter, but we were in the first one to take off. Having never been up in a ‘chopper’ before, I didn’t really know what to expect. It’s been a long time since I’ve been ‘killed’ on Microsoft Flight Simulator by Stuart trying to land one on one of the WTC twin towers (that’s how long it’s been).

This flight, however, was dramatic for all the right reasons. The views were sensational, and as we flew up the glacier valley, we rapidly gained altitude and speed. The sheer scale and quantity of the ice below was stupefying, and we buzzed perilously close to the steep, waterfall laden valley sides as we approached our landing spot just over half way up the glacier. We swept around at impossibly steep angles as we descended upon the sloping blanket of ice, before eventually settling down on the ice. This was where the real fun started...

As great as Laura’s front seat was, it had one major drawback - she was first ‘tourist’ out. Our pickaxe carrying guide tried to help her out the helicopter, however, no sooner had Laura’s foot touched the ice, her backside had two. One by one we each fell gracelessly out of the helicopter, and tried to crawl our way away from the helicopter so it could take off again. The whirring blades and accompanying windy gusts didn’t help matters. Our guide quickly joined us on his backside - which made us all feel a little less foolish, and then the helicopter was gone quicker than you can say ‘I’ve got a sore bum’.

Our guide proceeded to hack away at the ice to create a more manageable walking track away from the helicopter landing area, as we were waiting for the rest of our group to arrive. We were shown how to put on our crampons (spikes for the boots), which wasn’t as easy as it should have been. I struggle to keep my balance when I put my socks on in a morning, let alone manage to attach spikes to boots on the face of a glacier.

After the remainder of our group and equally unceremoniously disembarked from their ride and had attached their own foot weapons, we were off up the glacier in search of dramatic ice formations. They didn’t take much finding, but they sure didn’t half take some getting to. The most incredible thing on the glacier was difficulty in attaining a good sense of perspective. Amongst such a white canvas, judging scale and distances is unbelievably difficult, and the true size of the glacier is very difficult to grasp when you’re actually sliding about on the thing.

We saw cascading waterfalls, a dramatic ice collapse, climbed steep ice peeks, squeezed through crevasses, and even had time for littering. Yes, I littered on a glacier. I was filling up our water bottle with dripping glacier water, and I dropped the bottle top. This was a travesty in many senses, for the plastic bottle in question had been with us a long time and sadly it was no longer going to be of use. The water was tasty though, and in a few thousand years I’ll pop back to Franz Josef and collect my bottle top from the bottom of the glacier. “Sweet as”, as they say round these parts.

So after a couple of hours of general glacier horse-play, it was time to wait for the helicopter pick-up; we were the last to leave the glacier. Once back on less slippery terrain, we received a rather welcome bonus. A couple from Salt Lake City, Utah (interesting...), who had been on the first helicopter off the glacier, had left us a little surprise with the tour operators. It was two tickets for the glacier hot pools, as they weren’t going to use them. This rather luxurious extravagance was exactly what the doctor ordered for our aching bodies. In fact, I had to pose as a doctor, as their names were written on the ticket. Cue much hilarity...

In the evening we had some tasteless soup, in which Laura found a dead fly, went for a drink with our Canadian friends whom we had met in Punakaiki, and then in the morning it was a matter of catching the early bus to Wanaka. This was a serious journey - over six hours on the bus.

The journey started entertainingly enough - our driver, George, gave us an early indication of what we were in for. He gave us pretty much a flight attendant’s rundown of the safety procedures for the bus, repeatedly told us that he had no drugs in the first aid kit on the bus, and that no food must be consumed on his bus due to the risks of air circulation and food intolerances. Please consider that there was perhaps less than 10 people on this bus, and it was half 7 in the morning. George only took us half of the way to Wanaka, for he swapped with the driver coming the other way, but he sure did some talking. It started off innocently enough - a bit of history on the towns, a bit of information regarding the glaciers, but after about an hour, we realised he was still talking, and talking, and talking. He was telling us about the age of telegraph poles we were passing, the serial numbers and wingspans of planes that had crossed the Tasman Sea, the history of the road on which we were driving (it was built in 1995, so it wasn’t exactly fascinating stuff), but most entertainingly of all, he had a 30 minute rant about the Department of Conservation. The fact that nearly everybody on the bus had retreated into either sleep or earphones, did not both dear old George. His boundless enthusiasm had an easily identifiable source - he is a part time bus driver. George runs a holiday park for most of the week, but 2 days a week, he drives his bus. The rest of the time, I think George hits the ‘random article’ button on Wikipedia.

So I rant about George’s rant - oh the hypocrisy.

Wanaka, when we eventually got there, after what was a truly gorgeous drive through valleys, mountains and alongside lakes, was well worth the journey. It’s a small town situated on the shores of Lake Wanaka, surrounded by mountains and rolling hills. The hostel had fantastic views, and despite everyone in it being desperate for work leading up to the ski season, it was relaxed and comfortable. Again, we had the benefit of a wood-burning fire.

We spent a couple of nights in Wanaka, and when we weren’t sleeping, eating or playing scrabble and monopoly, we were walking. We did a 5 hour walk around the lake on our only full day there, which afforded us some stunning views. We contemplated walking up Mt Roy, but time would not allow it. On reflection, this was fortunate; despite it being dwarfed by many of the mountains around it, Mt Roy is apparently significantly higher than Ben Nevis, and thus Snowdon also. The idea of just popping up it to check out the view was not a great one.

I should probably wrap this up around now. Apologies for the rambling nature of yet another of our blogs - I lack Laura’s skill for concise prose it appears. In my defence, I am writing this in the middle of the night! So to sum up - Wanaka is a beautiful place to spend a few days, and we were blessed with immaculate weather. This allowed us to really take in the snow-capped mountains and crystal clear lake.

At around 2pm on Wednesday, we caught the bus to Queenstown - the capital of NZ tourism. Time to see what all the fuss is about!

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