St. Patty's Day, glaciers, and another big city
NEW ZEALAND | Friday, 19 March 2010 | Views [611]
3/19/2010 7:08 PM
It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to write anything down, mainly because our computer broke. Lame! Not quite sure what happened, but it worked fine the morning of the 17th, and then by nighttime, the screen was cracked. Luckily, it’s just the screen … and now that we’re in Christchurch (and they don’t lock up the computer towers), we’re able to plug the hostel’s monitor cable into our netbook and use it just fine. I think we’ll probably have to keep doing this as we move about our travels; there doesn’t seem like an easy way to return this to Costco and get it fixed. Ahh well, it’s far from the worst thing that can go wrong.
So, I’ll start back when we left Abel Tasman. We had a nice breakfast at a local café, then booked it to Greymouth (the biggest city on the west coast of NZ’s south island) --- we had a 6pm brewery / dinner experience at the south island’s oldest (or maybe NZ’s oldest?) brewery, Monteiths. The drive down was twisty and windy through the southern alps of NZ, but uneventful for the most part. It was pretty scenic, but you can only be impressed with driving through mountains to a certain point, and I think we hit that point about 15 minutes into the 4 hour drive, ha. [Funny side note … Jess just sat down next to me to handwrite in her journal and asks, “So what did we do on the 8th?” Haha. Her procrastination is adorable.] On the way to Greymouth, we made a last minute decision to stop by Punakaike --- we were up in the air on the decision, but talking to a local during a 5 minute gas stop was enough to convince us. There are blowholes there, and they call them the Pancake blowholes, or something. Basically, “something happened” and it created these cool rock formations that look like hundreds of stacks of pancakes; then throughout “sometime,” holes were carved in the formations and it made some cool blowholes. By the time we got there, it was around 4pm, and high tide (the best / only time to view the blowholes) was at 12:30pm. Doh! It’s really hard to time things like that when you’re trying to squeeze it in. But oh well; still neat to look at.
We got into Greymouth (someone said the place is as exciting as the name makes it sound, and they were right) at 5:30pm, dropped our bags off, and headed for the brewery tour. The tour itself was OK … felt like it was kinda rushed, but the tasting part was neat. They had 7 different brews, and then at the end we could pour a tasting glass of our favorite one. Not quite enough beer to get you buzzed, but enough to get you started (it was St. Patty’s day after all). We made friends with a German guy (from Cologne) and a British guy, as well as a couple girls from the States. After the tour, Jess and I had our “free” dinner, included with the tour, and then went next door to the Irish pub. It wasn’t long before our brewery tour friends met up with us, and away the night went. They place was your typical dimly lit Irish pub … awesome. The coolest part was the 3-to-4 piece Irish band that was playing. I think my favorite instrument was the rusted shovel --- no joke. The guy used a coin to make scratching sounds … basically just for tempo … but it looked hilarious. In short time we made more friends with some local Kiwis. One of the guys’ wife was actually Canadian (from Ottawa) … random. We had a great time chatting it up with them. By the end of it, we were invited to stay at their place (a no go for us b/c we couldn’t cancel our YHA room), and then they invited us to swing by the next night for a drink at their place. Unfortunately, our next day got a little flipped around and we didn’t get back into town until late, so we just swung by this morning to leave a note thanking them for the invite (yep, somehow we managed to remember the verbal directions they gave us to their house, “at the junction, go right, right, right. It’ll look like you’re driving into the woods, but my house is in there --- I built it myself.” Ha. Wicked. )
Anyway, we tried switching bars (to the only other bar in town), but there were not many people there, and they were playing Lady Ga Ga instead of Irish songs. So back to the Irish pub, and then back to the YHA for sleep.
It’s worth saying how unbelievably small thetown is. It’s the “biggest town on the west coast of NZ’s south island,” but there are only two bars in town. Also, only one gas station. You’d have to drive just outside of the main strip for the other one … but still … crazy small town for being the biggest town.
We got up the next morning (yesterday) at 9am and tried to book our 12:30pm tour at the Franz Joseph glacier. The lady at the YHA told us we would have no problem booking that in the morning, but naturally, when we tried, all tours for that glacier were booked for the day. The backup plan was the Fox glacier, which is 30 minutes further. It’s supposed to be the same as the Franz Joseph, but Fox is just not as popular. Oh well. We booked the 1:35 tour, rushed out the door to make it, got stuck in a 20 minute line at the gas station (2 of the 8 pumps were open), and then rushed back to the YHA to cancel our 1:30 tour b/c there was no way we’d make it with that gas station delay. Doh! Luckily we could switch to the 2:30 tour and jetted for the 3 hour drive to the glacier.
Our random last minute change-ups ended out working in our favor because we happened to be the last group of the day with only two other people going. They normally take groups of 16, so the 4 of us were able to move much faster and go much further than a “normal” half-day hike would have. The glacier itself was quite a sight. It’s a giant mass of ice in-between two huge mountains. It actually looks like frozen water rushing through a valley. It was any where from 2-5 C, so it didn’t really feel like we were near a glacier, but I guess that’s how glaciers work --- they melt at the base, but are constantly regenerating themselves at the top … which results in a constant flow of ice year after year. The hike to get to the glacier was very uphill, and took about 45 mins. When we got to the glacier, we had to strap-on our crampons (metal spikes) so that we could walk on the ice easily. Within 20 minutes, we were well onto the glacier, and walking across pre-carved paths and stairs. It was quite an experience being on such a huge block of ice. It was also quite “dangerous.” We were with a guide, so they obviously knew what they were doing, but to the layperson, a wrong step would mean a long fall through the ice. Or (as has happened in very recent years), if you go to places that the guide avoids, you may be crushed by a 50 ton block of ice, or be swept away by a sudden surge of water, or be crushed by a 10 ton boulder from above. Awesome.
On a normal day hike, we would’ve stopped at a certain spot and had a chat about the glacier. But our guide was cool, and our group was fast, so we made it to a spot that only the full-day hikes get to. It was a little hole in the ice (3m long?) that made for a good slide. At the bottom of the slide, there was a small cave we could walk through. The slide was pretty fun --- if you didn’t use your crampons, you went quite fast … although, hitting your elbows on the ice hurts. The small cave was even cooler. It was anywhere from 18-36 inches wide, and it winded around 4 or 5 different 45 degree corners. You could walk in about 10 feet, before it was too narrow to go any further. By that point, it was too narrow to easily turn around, so you had to back peddle. What was cool about the cave was that due to “blah blah blah” the only band of light that can make it through the ice is blue. So the ice cave was entirely blue. So cool! I guess there are bigger caves that look “electric blue,” but are not artificially lit in any way. Wicked. We spent a lot of time in this spot, taking tons of pictures and having a blast. At one point, our guide went into the cave, and realized that there was a point in the cave where you could look up through the ice. That point was too far to reach normally, so he gave me his axe to chop a way through. I got to the narrow point, axe in hand, but was a little too past my comfort level to chop ice inside of an (at that point) unexplored ice cave. What’s more … the guide was past his comfort level too. Haha. Soooo … that was the end of it. All in all, an amazing glacier experience. Next time, we’ll definitely have to do a heli-drop to the top of the glacier. From there, you can ice climb and get to those wicked electric blue ice caves.
That was pretty much the extent of our day. The drive back was quick so we could maximize daylight driving time, but we didn’t get back until 9:30pm --- most places were closed by then, so a delicious Big Mac and Fries did the trick.
This morning, we slept in. Check out was at 10am, and we didn’t get up until 10:10. At 10:12, there was a loud knock at the door, so we got out of there quick. We grabbed a quick breakfast and stopped by a jade gallery on our way out. The west coast of the south island is known for its jade. The gallery was cool but a bit over priced. NZ $150 for something that can be found 50% less in souvenir shops. Lame. After that, we stopped by our friends’ place from the night before, and then booked it to Christchurch.
The drive through Arthur’s Pass was much easier than expected. You’re traversing across the southern alps, but it’s basically through flatland valleys the whole way. This got us into Christchurch in no time.
We quickly checked into the YHA, and then grabbed a bite to eat. We spent some more time unpacking, grabbed a nice Italian dinner, then spent the rest of our night trying to figure out the rest of our trip, and also getting caught up on e-mails. Now it’s way past our bedtime … gotta get up to swim with some tiny dolphins tomorrow.
