Ice Ice Baby
Trip Start
Nov 01, 2005
1
78
117
Trip End
Nov 2006
Franz Josef,
South Island,
New Zealand
Saturday, July 8, 2006
beautiful
! But before i tell you why this small town which is smaller than my home town of puckeridge is soooo amazing, let me tell you about the silly things naomi says as i believe this could be a regular feature on the travelpod, i'll call it naomisms, my favourite from yesterday was "Everyday has a new date" well that was news to me..... he he!
So, we were up early on 7th july, after the compfyiest sleep i've had in ages and warmed ourselves up puttin on 4 top layers and two pairs of trousers and lookin like the michelin man as we were off to climb a glacier for 9 hours! 1st of all we had a delicious breakfast made by naomi of porridge, warm water and sugar to give us the fuel we needed to take on the challenge! We headed to the trek centre and were all kitted up, overtrousers, another jacket and some massive kickass boots, that weighed about a kilo each and it was gonna be fun to drag these big buggers around on our feet and over the glacier. It was a beautifully sunny day, which the moutains look beautiful. We headed up in the bus to the rainforest and then walked through that to the foot of the glacier, it looked like the glacier was close but took over an hour to get to the bottom of it as it's all an illussion you see, whilst we were walking up i was boiling up like a pot of pasta, feelin really faint and decided to take all my layers off (well not all of them of course), which sounded like a good idea at the time but not such a good idea today seens as i've woken up with the worst cold ever!
Once we were at the bottom of the glacier it looked superb, it was glistening in the sun, so i got me camera out and the slide film i'd saved for such an occassion only to find out the battery was dead in my slr, gutted but at least i had me trusty new digital camera at my side
deep treks
! We all sat at the bottom of this massive block of ice whilst we were given our safety chat and ice studs that we attached to our boots, but mine were a size too small, well they looked like they were but to my embarrassment when i called the guy over, i just handed extended them out - good one! Naomi's studs were broken but the guy just did a kind of makeshift knot in the straps and she was good to go, we were shown how to walk in them, shoulder width apart and toe down first and we were off, spilt into 4 groups of ten! I was mervous, even more so as we saw a massive sign saying DANGER - only for experienced climbers!!! This was gonna be interesting, me and naomi had only been discussing the day before with sam and holly (lovely couple from manchester) what injuries would make us head home and we decided broken arm... we'd just carry each others gear and broken leg, well it would be the next flight home i'm affraid and this conversation was looking like it may become a reality as they explained how easy it was to brake one's arms and legs whilst on the glacier!So we started trekking and it really was amazing, no pictures i put on or words i write will explain how good it was, possibly the most amazing thing i've done on my travels, it's just spectacular. You climb in and out and through and over the glacier and the blue colour that you see and the way it glistens in the sun is just fantastic, i took tons of pics so i'll put some up real soon! The guide was cutting us steps in the ice and we were walking over massive gauges and then under and through guages and at one point we walked trough a really thin two walls of ice and you nearly get stuck, the space in 1/2 a metre wide and whilst shuffling along trying to get through with your backpack on your pack you are then faced with a 100yd drop that's a metre wide that you have to then jump over, pretty csry stuff, then you have steep steps that you do the 'franz shuffle' down where you come down sideways with one foot one each step but a massive gap between each and an even bigger fall if you were to slip...
gaps
. it was really mentally challenging, i would'nt advise anyone whose really scared of heights of chlosterophobic to do as you are in some really tight spaces and have to navigate around some steep drops! We were warned that falling hurts and my gosh it does, like falling on rock hard freezing called tarmac and i have a nice bruise on my elbow as i put my foot on a step that just disintigrated into nothing and my foot went straight through, ouch and naomi has a good injury on her hand from falling over her boots and landing smack on the ice, it makes you doubley careful to not do it again once you cracked the ice once!We had a wee stop for our lunch and were told not to litter so with that the top of my drinks bottle comes flying out my hand and i fling myself after it but falls down a massive gauge in the ice and is lost forever in the glacier! big oops, naomi dropped a raisan too the naughty girl. After lunch we were given ice picks to help us hold onto the ice with as it was gonna get more challenging, they were cutting a lot more new routes in the afternoon, making new steps over drops and sending us through even tighter gaps and holes, so the ice hackes were a godsend and i think really did save me and naomi from falling on many an occassion! Now saying this was challenging and a tad scary, but it was more than worth it, cos it really was the most amzing thing, every crevess in the ice was a different colour and a diffrent shape and just stunning, i said wow an awful many times whilst up there, the sun disappeared in the afternoon and it rained but the glacier carried on looking magnificent
holes
! I was gutted when the day was over and we made our way back it was just brilliant! And to think me and naomi were only gonna do the 3/4 day trek, i wish they'd have been an even longer option! The glacier is a fantastic thing to photograph to and looks great on the pics, would even give a supermodel a run for her money - what a geeky thing i just said! Well after a day on the ice and tummy full of choc covered raisons me and naomi had our free soup and sat infront of the log fire with a bottle of red vino and some new friends, drinking and chatting, all that was missing was music, we had naomi's mp3 player but you could hardly hear the music from the headphones and then holly came up with a fab idea, a great bit of advice for all backpackers, if you need a speaker for your headphones, roll up a a4 piece of card into a cone and tape your headphone to the bottom of it, the smallest part of the cone and the music really does get louder.... well done holly and the homemade speaker! Whilst we were sitting there 3 guys ran in from outside in soaking wet boxes, hhhhmmmmm i have no idea what they were up to, they were locals, any of my newzealand pals like to fill me in??? very odd! Later they scottish guys from our bus came to get us and with holly, siobhan, sam and the other people from the bus we headed to the bar, well the only bar here actually, where we claimed our free shot and played some drinking games, guys in leeds i taught them the one with the cig packet over the drink and it went down a treat, so a few vodka's later we crashed and burned, well nearly we had enough time to eat some crumpets and talk nonsense to a poor irish guy, naomi told him here name was trace and i sat there just making rhymes saying things like 'do up your lace trace' what's on your face trace' 'ain't you ace trace'.... needless to say i think he was glad when we wnet to bed, we saw him today though and he said it was funny, i apologised
inside the glacier
! Before we made it to bed we tried to get the log fire lit again to keep all our fellow backpackers warma nd only managed to half light logs and make flames from the newpaper we put on, well we tried!Today, we finally had a lie in... hooray, my 1st in a long time and we drank soup and watched lord of the rings and the sceenery really does look like that here, it's superb! Tonight we are searching for glowworms and tomo we get a 6 hour bus to queenstown... I'm at the mo sat on a bus writing this and it's warm here so i'm reluctant to leave anyways, i've written enough for now, i'm gonna go brave the rain! Have a great weekend and hello naomi's mates who've started reading this i do have friends by the way she's just a big scally! x x x
