Aug 2006

Franz Josef: Icy.
Queenstown: Cold, full of annoying Brits.
Brisbane: Hot.
Sydney: Cold, raining, a bit sunny sometimes.
Melbourne: The less said about it the better.
Cairns: Hotter than Brisbane.

There you go. A month’s worth of updates done in 30 words.

Okay, so that wasn’t the best summary. It’s just really hard to know where to start when there is SOOOOOO much to write about! Instead of turning this update into a long, boring narrative charting our exact movements over the last month, I’ll try to stick to the interesting stuff, taking each of the above places as individual chapters. I stress the word ‘try‘.

Our last update was before we headed west across the South Island of New Zealand to brave the glacier at Franz Josef. We spent around 5 hours on the TranzAlpine train service from Christchurch to Greymouth. The scenery was utterly stunning for the duration of the journey, except when we went through a very long tunnel. The camera was cemented to my face the entire time! As the name of the service suggests, we wound through the southern alps, between snow-capped mountains and sleepy towns that had less people living there than the average four-piece band. As soon as I was readying myself to put the camera away and leave the freezing confines of the observation deck, we’d turn to the left or right and another breathtaking view would convince me that frostbite wasn’t all that bad. A small price to pay. To put into perspective exactly how gorgeous and photogenic New Zealand is, over the almost four weeks we have spent in Australia we have taken about 250 photos . Over the four weeks spent in New Zealand we too just over 2500. I must add that about 50 of the 250 were of Ramsey Street!

It should be noted that New Zealand is fantastic for syncing-up their transport services even between separate companies. The coach down to Franz Josef was due to set off 45 minutes after we arrived, but we were told if we were delayed for any reason, it would wait for us! I can’t imagine that ever happening in England - National Express wouldn’t care if your GNER train was running late by 15 minutes even if it meant you’d miss the only bus that day to wherever it is you’re going. But we didn’t have to test this as the train arrived exactly on time, as with every other bus and train we’d been on in the rest of the country. This gave us ample time to get a Subway sandwich!

On the coach down to the town of Franz Josef we were bombarded with all sorts of exciting facts by our driver. One of the most interesting was that in some parts of the Southern Alps, rainfall is measured in metres each year, not centimetres. One town whose name eludes me, apparently receives up to 9 metres of rain per year! I thought the weather in Bradford was cruddy, but 9 metres! That’s deeper than an Olympic diving pool. The odd thing was though, that just twenty or thirty miles down the road, they have severe droughts each year. The driver was also keen to point out anything that was even slightly related to the Lord of the Rings movie - we saw the pool where Gollum struggles to catch the fish before he is ambushed in The Two Towers. The time passed very quickly and we arrived in Franz just before dusk.

We had booked a full day hike figuring there was no point in wimping out half way through. We agreed we’d both feel like losers, quitters and every other related synonym in the book (the thesaurus that is). We were so glad we did - it was absolutely mind-blowing! It was also absolutely terrifying in places too! As we reached the foot of the glacier it was time to attach our crampons and start worrying as we caught a glimpse of the fully exposed ice-staircase that ascended for about 20 feet around the front wall. Of course there were no safety rails or ropes until we got to the top and the entrance tunnel that lead inside the ice. Kate was quite alarmed at this point, looking first at the staircase then at me, then back at the staircase with anxiety. Once we started our climb things didn’t get much better when Kate lost her footing and slid back down a few steps. After assuring us all she was fine - breathing very heavily the whole time - she continued up to the safety of the entrance cave. We were thinking that if the rest of the day was to be like that, we’d never make it out of Franz Josef alive!

The rest of the day was however quite fantastic - we walked across stupidly deep crevasses, alongside bottomless icy pools - two of which Kate managed to fall almost waist-deep into!), squeezed through very thin cracks (which we were told by our guide as we were half-way through were liable to close up suddenly as the glacier advanced!) and even slid down a wormhole that had been converted into a crude slide, which while massively fun, left us very bruised! We ate our lunch of crisp sandwiches and budget-range cookies about half way up - our aim was to get up near the bottom of the icefalls at the upper section of the glacier. An icefall, if you’re wondering, is where the fresh ice at the top of the glacier spills over the edge and joins the main body of the glacier. Our guide informed us that these particular falls move at approximately 11 metres per day, which is quite fast for ice, as the Franz Josef glacier as a whole only advances 1 metre per day.

Because the ice shifts so much on a day to day basis, the paths the guides create frequently change. This meant our route had to be improvised somewhat: our crazy Canadian guide often told us to wait while he bashed out a new and more dangerous trail for us to follow. We all loved it! Although we didn’t make it as high as we’d intended, it was the highest our guide had taken any group for the past few months, which made us feel at least a little bit special. The views were amazing - I really am running out of synonyms for that word now - I must have taken at least fifty pictures of the view back toward the base of the glacier, and the mountain range in the distance.

Our descent took around an hour and a half. It passed without incident, although I did get told off for not hanging onto the rope while I was taking a photo standing on the edge of a fifty-foot crevasse… I sheepishly apologised and held on. It was a damn good picture though!
We had a fantastic time and it made us love New Zealand EVEN MORE than we loved it before. We headed to the pub for celebratory beer…which coincidentally is cheap over there! It was $3 per pint in a nice bar - that’s £1! Cheap beer, remarkable scenery and fabulous activities. What more could you possibly want?! GO TO NEW ZEALAND NOW!