Climbing glaciers and facing off with Seals
Trip Start
Oct 21, 2006
1
26
31
Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Franz Josef to Kaikoura,
New Zealand
Friday, February 9, 2007
After the relatively sedate Canyoning in Wanaka i headed on to Franz Josef to climb the glacier. The trip across to the West Coast was mind blowing. To get there i had to drive through the Haast Pass which is possibly the most rugged and in your face mountain pass i have ever seen - it is like driving through a lost world. It was pissing down with rain (160mm in one day - more than some places get in a year) and the clouds clung to the top of the mountains to lend an eery feeling of suppression to the whole thing. Aside from the towering mountains and glowering clouds that defined the cavernous gorge, the rain had swelled the river and it raged and foamed below with torrents of white water. The most spectacular aspect of the Pass though, had to be the waterfalls which tore through the tree lined valley sides. The ones on the side of the valley the road ran along crashed into the tarmac, swollen as they were beyond their usual restraints. Some of the larger falls fell fully across half the road and driving through them was more a matter of luck than judgment. I loved it and backed up to have another go at several points.
Rain was great for the Pass but less great for glacier walking. I arrived in Franz Josef to a sodden and miserable little town that didn't have much going for it, and was told there was no point waiting for the weather to clear before walking up the glacier as it rains 200 days a year here (they get about 8 metres of rain a year). Bugger it, i was going up anyway. As it transpired there was a break in the weather the following day and we had glorious sunshine for the day. Kitting up was not fun though as the kit was still very wet from the previous 3 days rain. I poured about half a pint of water out of each boot before putting them on (well, i did with the second one, i forgot to check when i put the first one on). We got full Goretex head to foot kit, Climbing Boots, Crampons and Ice Axes if we felt frisky enough and needed the extra balance they would provide. The Glacier is in retreat though it's tongue was still 12km long, 150 - 300m thick and fed from a basin at the top which measured 32 sq km. That is a lot of ice. The first part of the ascent was relatively straightforward as we traversed and ascended via cut steps and reasonable tracks. However easy progress was short lived as we hit he folding point in the glacier where it ran over a rock lip. At this point the ice fractured in a series of vertical fans which were anything up to 30m high. To progress up the glacier we had to cut and climb our way up these vertical ice faces. Spectacular to be in and amazing to climb up, though it took it out of you after an hour or two. I was grateful for lunch to fuel up. Eating lunch while sitting on a glacier is much like i imagine it feels like to have someone insert ice cubes up your arse while someone else blows snow in your face. Lunch was a brief stop. You could hear the ice crashing in on itself at various points in great crescendo's which added too the sense of adventure. Eventually, after 6 hours on the ice we made our way back down, knackered, a fair bit bruised but all of us buzzed from the experience.
I cursed my bad luck as i have yet another snoring freak in the dorm with me. This one is a bloke, has one eye (i shit you not), is a dwarf and only speaks German. Needless to say my efforts to engage him in conversation fell on deaf ears. Not only does he snore like someone farting down a Tuba, he got up at 6.ooam both mornings and inexplicably rustled plastic shopping bags for half an hour. I tried to remain calm and theorized he must have OCD or some such problem and that i should not get wound up by him but eventually i caved in and asked him politely if he wouldn't mind fiddling with his bags somewhere else. I also tried to 'help' him with his snoring but gave up after having woke him twice to suggest he lies on his side or better still his face as imminent asphyxiation would come as a welcome relief to the rest of us. Nothing helped and the only course of action let to me was retribution - i spent the second night farting into his bunk and accidentally kicked his stuff across the room. I know it is puerile but damn it was satisfying.
ABEL TASMAN
After larking around on the ice i was keen to get a move on and get up to the coast and the Abel Tasman national park to do some trekking in relative warmth. On the way i gave a lift to a Dutch bloke back to Haast and spent a most enjoyable hour listening to him rant about the Germans. I used Nelson as my base for exploring Abel Tasman - it is a great place and meant to be the most desirable place to live in New Zealand on account of it's sunshine hours and pleasant city centre. Not sure it is all that but it was a welcome relief from the rain in Franz Josef. I pitched up as the annual Buskers festival was on and it was fantastic. The most memorable act being a cross dressing American comedian and pantomime artist. His masterpiece was juggling knives while wearing roller skates and a dress atop 3 beer barrels on the stage ! His best line was in the build up to this when he admitted to the crowd, "I am American....(glances at beer barrels)... i may have started something here i cannot finish" followed by pause for comic effect. It took the crowd a second or two to realise the link with Iraq and then they burst into laughter.
The walk along the coast of the Abel Tasman national park was great (running out of superlatives). It was a baking hot day (well, for NZ it was hot) and the walk wove round the headlands and bays along the coastal strip of the park. I got a water taxi out and then set off in earnest for the 8 hour walk back. It was a relatively busy trail which detracted slightly from the experience but the coast line was riddled with pristine sandy coves and after stopping to swim at various points i no longer minded the company. I had lunch at Torrent Bay and spent a most amusing half hour watching a huge woman break into a panic when she realised how little the hotel had given her and her husband in their packed lunch. She was practically in tears with joy when she discovered the chocolate bar, which she snatched out of her wiry husbands hands and ate in one. Depressingly they were English. I left as she started to wipe sunscreen through the folds in her screen. After the glacier trek i was wasted and the walk nearly finished me off as the first four hours saw the track Yo Yo up and down the headlands. I was just starting to feel proud of the effort when a pregnant lady waltzed past with her handbag, smiled and said hello !!
MARLBOROUGH SOUNDS
After that walk i headed to Picton for a little R&R. Picton is nestled in amongst the Marlborough Sounds, a series of flooded river tributaries at the top of South Island. The town is pretty enough but the location, on the edge of Queen Charlotte Sound is stunning. I spent the first afternoon relaxing in the park by the sound, watching the world go by. In celebration for my efforts the last few days i bought a bottle of fizz and headed back to my hostel to drink it. It was while i was making my way through the second half of the bottle that i was 'fortunate' enough to meet Maren. Maren is a 36 year old German girl who looks like a cross between Yoda and Animal off the Muppets. She was into alternative therapies. Maren decided she would accompany me over the next two days as i explored the Sounds - Deep Joy. I tried my best to put her off and in the end gave up. I decided i would get up early and leave before she woke so i could get away from here. The plan proved less effective when i realised she was sleeping in the bunk underneath me. So, with muttering hippie German Yoda girl in tow, i headed out to hike up the mountains of the sound to get a view across them. The walk was arduous but i managed to resist congratulating myself in case some blind overweight paraplegic jogged passed effortlessly to further erode my now dwindling ego. Had a great view across the Sounds from the top of the lookout hill / mountain. It was quite busy at the top and we were attracting rather more attention than i was comfortable with. Still, i guess it is not every day you see Yoda and Lurch hiking around the place. Even more unlikely to see Yoda meditating which included periods of groaning and spasmodic head, body and arm movement as she 'released the energy flows'. I decided i would have to dump the young lady when she started to tell me about the key to her healthy sex life and tips on female masturbation. TOO MUCH DETAIL. I could have gone my whole life happily not knowing half of what she told me on the climb down.
KAIKOURA - SWIMMING WITH SEALS
I left for Kaikoura the next day to go whale watching and try to escape my new traveling companion. Regrettably Maren decided it would be a great idea to go back to Kaikoura and told me she would join me for the journey. I spent the two hours it took to drive down to Kaikoura in silence in protest at the invasion of my privacy. This didn't seem to matter to Maren who was busy meditating in the seat next to me. I got to Kaikoura and told her that i would appreciate being alone for the next section of my travels which thankfully fitted with her plans as well.
Kaikoura is famous for it's whale watching (unique underwater topography means the migrating sperm whales stop off very close to shore to feed) and i booked to go out and have a look. The sea was big on the day i arrived and they had canceled the days trips. My heart sank as i envisaged spending the whole trip with my head in a puke bag the following day. As it turned out i had perfect weather and the swell was only a couple of metres. It still managed to turn a couple of people and i had the pleasure of sitting next to a poor German lady who started throwing up almost the moment we left harbour. I tried to offer her some advice on how to handle it but she was a little pre-occupied trying to clean the puke from her hair. We saw three Sperm Whales on the trip - all of them from not more than 15-20m away. I had seen the Souther Right Whale in Argentina before but it was nothing compared to the male Sperm Whales which must have been fully twice their size. They dwarfed the boat we were on. On the way back in we detoured to catch a pod of Dolphins playing near the coast and they raced us part way back to the harbour, jumping through the wash of the engines and flashing past the bow of the boat.
I had booked up seal swimming in the afternoon. The whale watching had been fun but it really just killed time before i got to play with the Fur Seals. It was a scream - the seals are all wild but incredibly inquisitive and playful. It did not take long for the whole colony to stop sunning themselves and dive into the water to play with us. I had seals darting all over the place and charging up to me only to flash away at the last moment. Several of them jumped clean out of the water over us as we swam by. They are beautiful creatures and it was awe inspiring to see them underwater playing and fishing as we swam with them. Certainly a highlight of the trip. Frostbite set in after a couple of hours and i beat a reluctant retreat back to the boat at the point i couldn't feel my face, hands, groin and feet anymore.
Buzzed from the day i headed into town to calm down over a few beers and met Chris, the outrageous queen from Wanaka. He promptly regaled me with stories of the German bloke he had got lucky with in Christchurch, broadcasting the truly embarrassing bits for the whole pub to hear. It was a great evening and i eventually staggered back to my hostel at 1.00am feeling very worse for wear.
Kaikoura is lovely but a couple of days is enough - on to Christchurch ...................
