Day 59 - Sun 28th Dec - Bus from Greymouth to Franz Josef

As mentioned the Rotorua to Taupo blog, I am getting really fed up with fairly short journeys taking all day because the bus stops at ten thousand places along the way. All of which want your money.

Today on our journey from Greymouth to Franz Josef (left at 8am got there at 3pm), we had to stop at the gold mining place first (to pan for strategically placed speckles of gold in plastic bins), 'Pete's outback place' to look at a video of deer hunting / farming, couple of possums in a cage and a pig that looks like its seen better days. Oh and several photo stops too along the way.

As we still had a fair bit of afternoon left by the time we got there, Debbie (Scottish girl met on train / bus) headed to the hot pools for a bit of relaxation and chilling out.

I had decided to stay in Franz Josef for two nights so I still had the next day to see the glacier, unlike those only staying one night who had jumped off the bus and straight out on a half day hike (3-8pm).

It's also hard to believe that it is now exactly two months since I stepped on the plane at Heathrow. Time is going far far far too quickly.

Day 60 - Mon 29th Dec - Franz Josef Glacier

Woken up at 4.20am by the town fire alarm (yes, the whole town) going off. They have a volunteer fire brigade so when a fire alarm goes off, they set off a siren around the whole town to wake up all the volunteers (and anyone else who is unfortunate enough to be in the vacinity.

The glacier is what Franz Josef is all about and its why everyone is there. Having not seen a glacier before I found the whole concept quite strange and couldn't understand that there could be a big lump of ice when it was a hot sunny day and the middle of summer?

For those of you that know as little as I did about what a glacier is, I will attempt to explain in very simple terms. Two mountains with a valley in between. Lots and lots and lots of snow each year (thats the important bit), the snow all falls down into the valley, getting compressed and turning into ice. The volume of new snow fall each year far outweighs the speed which it melts, therefore over hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of years a glacier forms. It is therefore continaully moving and shifting depending on snow fall and melting. Something like that anyway.

I had signed up to do the full day hike (8 hours) as I had the second day there. Another early start (of course) for the 8am check in at the hiking place. We then had a short bus ride to the glacier valley. It took about an hour to walk from the drop off point to the base of the glacier. At the base we had to put crampons (ice spikes on bottom of boots) onto our boots (they had also giving us big meaty walking boots too). Then it was time to start our ascent.

We were all split up into 5 groups of about 10 people (loosely based on experience). Our guide was a very petite Chilean girl. She was smally and might, and sure knew how to weild a pick axe in the ice! The guides use axes to cut out steps into the ice for you to walk on, and as the ice melts so quickly they are continually doing it, they even have people up on the glacier whos sole job is to keep cutting out paths and steps all day.

The first section of the glacier was quite rocky and it took a ltitle while to get over that and onto the pure ice. Some of it was really narrow and at one point we had to squeeze through side on inside a ice crevice. I wont talk too much more about the glacier, I'll just let the photos do the talking.

It was quite a full on day, as we only stopped for about 20 mins to have lunch and were walking for about 8 hours. In hindsight this would have been the better evening to go to the hot pools! We were very lucky with the weather that day too as it was very hot (was raining the next day), so after heading back and having a shower I rewarded myself with some fish and chips, sat outside in the sunshine!

Franz Josef town (small village!) has a very nice feel to it. There is not much there about from hostels and activity centres (couple of bars). Its a little alpine village and feels to me what I would expect Switzerland or Austria to be like. Nice place, but once you've done the glacier you wouldn't want to hang around any longer.

Early night and slept like a log ready for my trip to Queenstown the next day.