Wednesday was a bit of a boy’s day – sorry ladies.
Ben, Liam and myself geared up at the glaciar touring company and headed off on the bus up to the base of the Franz Josef glaciar. We were given boots, socks, a jacket and crampons – the spikey things that clip onto your boots for walking on ice.
The walk from the carpark to the glaciar was about 2.5kms or so across mixed rubble. From there, it was a fairly sharp climb up the glaciar, albeit it felt and looked more like a coal mound. Once we got to the point where we’d actually step onto fresh ice, we put our crampons on and started the climb.
Since we boys are so agile and fit (ahem), we went into group 1 which was for the fitter people in the 60-strong group. We held our own, traversing the huge glaciar pretty much without issue. The only tough bit came when we had to climb through an ice cave where my enormous backpack (not helped by my expanded waistline on the trip) had a bit of issue squeezing through. Got very wet cold in that bit! But all was well.
We walked on the ice for 1-2 hours all up, seeing some very pretty “blue” ice, sinkholes that were 80m deep, very tight walkways between 5m+ high walls of ice… Great views as well as we ended up quite high.
Was definitely worth doing. The girls had a great time having a look around the town, doing some souvenir shopping and so-on.
From there, we drove a few hours up to Greymouth – a 10,000 person strong town which was, well, grey. Our main purpose was to break up the driving, but we ended up in some very unassuming accommodation which was really quite nice. We got dropped off at Monteith Brewery, becoming better known in Australia as a smaller-type brewery (the Summer Ale was excellent). We went on a tour, which was pretty lame really and ended up in the brewery’s pub area where we got to sample the 6 or so different beers they produce.
We also got to have a pour which was a bit of fun. Unfortunately we still haven’t convinced the girls that beer is the way to go, but it was a bit of fun.
Today we’re driving across from Greymouth to Christchurch – 4 or so hours. I’m currently having breakfast at Arthur’s Pass which is a snow-covered town up in the mountains. About 2.5hrs to go we estimate. We’re all a bit sick of the driving by now – especially since it’s so twisty & slow and the scenery, whilst very pretty, is a bit of the same ol’, same ol’ after a while.
We’ve only just heard about the earthquake – we didn’t feel it unfortunately. Possibly a bit too far north for that.
Hopefully I’ll get a bit of time tonight to put up some photos.