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Published: November 11th 2006
The semester/year has come to end and so came the difficulut task for packing my entire life in New Zeland back into two suitcases and a backpack (a very hard feat indeed!) only one break down when i really didnt think i would get everything home, but somehow i did and headed out. Nathan and I rented a 'camper van' for a few days to give us transport and a place to stay (given i got kicked out of Lincoln and we sold our car). now this was more of a mini-van with the back seats removed and replaced with a bed and table and a kitchen in the boot...it was pretty cramped but we made it work.
So in our new ride we took off for the west coast one more time (we were both real tired of Arthur's Pass) Luck and the weather was on our side, sunny warm weather all the way! Well warm in the valley not on the glacier that was really quite cold. We got all fitted into our silly outfits of rain pants, gloves, hats, giant coats and boots. It was 45min hike through the valley to get to the glacier that consisted with
climbing a rock ledge and going up a waterfall and onto the ice. This thing was huge! like yeah it looks kinda big when your miles away but when you get right up on it...HUGE. we strapped on our cramp on's (big metal spikes for our shoes that weighed a ton!) and headed up. Now Franz is the steepest glacieral front in the world so we had quite a climb instore for us.
The ice face was the most dangerus, with carvasus meters and meters deep and with one wrong step we could be falling down them...comforting really. But these were the most beautiful bc u got the deep blues comming through with the more cold and dense ice building up on the bottom.
Once at the top we got to explore in an ice cave, tight fit getting in and out let me tell you! and we got to squeeze (again) into small cravasus, some with pretty unstable floors due to the heavy rain fall that had been through the area ealier, so if you didnt step right you were up to your knee or higher in freezing ice water (just ask Nathan he did half the trip with
one very wet boot)
Over all it was an amazing experience, something that i never thought i would ever be able to do.
We finished our trip with a relaxing kayaking trip into a bird santuary, only saw a couple of sea birds and we got stuck a few times...Nathan was the navigator and not a very good one i kept getting tossed into the trees! But it was real fun and pretty relaxing when we had the wind with us, pretty tiring when we were going against it.
I will add photos when i dl them off my camera, but my cord is somewhere in my luggage and i dont feel like going through everything
Till next time...
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Leslie Wilcox
non-member comment
returning home?
hey babe, does this mean your coming back to the states sometime soon? I miss you, and I have many updates :) to give you!