torsdag 5 mars 2009

Chill'n in Wanaka + day 8 of Active NZ trip




















Right now I'm spending a fairly wet day, after a fairly wet night, in Wanaka. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's raining but not wearing rain clothes would get you some what moist. Yesterday's weather was nice though, I went for a swim in Lake Wanaka which was warmer then Lake Wakatipu. For my English speaking friends I would also like to add that I've not skydived yet, I was up at 15000ft about to jump when the wind got to strong so we had to abort and land with the plane:-(

16/2 DAY 8 Franz Josef Glacier

Woke up quite late, and packed my things before heading for a nice Egg&Bacon breakfast. During the night the north bound group had avenged our little prank and painted Nancy (name of our bus) with some yellow spay paint. But Baz and Zoe had already decorated there's with toilet paper so I guess we had it coming ;-)
The First stop was short but steep hike up to a very nice viewpoint, of which there are several in New Zealand. Next time we stepped out of Nancy was at "The Gates of Haas" to cross a bridge. Which we apparently had to do by foot, because of weight restrictions. The funny thing was though, that while we where all crossing the bridge by foot, Baz drove across at the same time, didn't quite get the point of that.

A few stops "lookouts" later we arrived in the small town of Franz Josef, where some of us including me was doing a Heli Hike. After signing in and putting on hiking boots, packing our cameras, water bottles, and getting a safety briefing by a very serious Japanese man, we boarded the helicopter and took of. The flight was quite short but very scenic as we flew up over the glacier, which was massive, before we landed about 1/3 of the way up the glacier.

Meeting us on the glacier was Nicki our Kiwi glacier guide. Using me as an example she shoved us how to correctly put on our crampons (stegjarn). When that was done we grabbed our ice axes and headed out for a hike on the Glacier. The hike was really cool we where walking across water filled crevasses and also crawled through ice caves. After about 2-3 hours of tramping on the glacier we where back at the landing site. It was really hard to get any kind of scale on how big the glacier was but our hike just covered a small spot of the whole glacier.

Back on to Nacy we headed towards the small coast village of Okarito, to spend the night. After getting settled we had a nice Moroccan stew with cous-cous and feta salad for dinner. Being on the west coast we of course had to go down to the beach for the absolutely beautiful sunset. And when the sun had set and darkness came the sky was packed with stars, more then I can remember ever viewing before. Some of course unique to the southern hemisphere like the Southern cross.

Another great adventures day was at it's end, only to be followed by the next which was even greater.

Upplagd av kl.

1 kommentar:

  1. Unknown11 mars 2009 kl. 05:32

    Hej brorsan!

    Kunde inte skriva kommentar på senaste inlägget, så skriver här istället.
    Du gör allt för att få bra kort hör jag, känner igen mig där. Trist när vissa andra inte fattar :-) skratt.
    Idag skulle vi ha redovisning av våra böcker, men gästläraren var sjuk, så som jag slet för att bli klar i tid. blev rätt bra iallafall.
    Du verkar ha det riktigt bra där borta, kan jag förstå, så du kommer väl inte hem på ett tag antar jag.

    Ha de fortsatt fett!
    Kram Per

    SvaraRadera

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