Franz Josef glacier

If finals weren't looming in the not-so-distant future, I would be glowing with happiness from the last weekend, but alas, finals have cut my happiness-basking short. Still, this weekend was fabulous and was definitely one of the highlights of my semester (though really, what part of this semester hasn't been part of the highlights?). We went out to the West Coast to Franz Josef glacier, one of two magnificently huge glaciers that dominate NZ's west coast and provide a much-needed tourist base to sustain the communities out there. It's about a seven hour drive from Dunedin, and it's almost entirely windy, sickening roads. We didn't leave till 5, so it was a really long night full of carsickness from almost everybody in the car, extreme exhaustion, and general crankiness. We had booked an 8:15 AM full-day hike on the glacier, so we were really short on sleep the next day. Despite the not-so-pleasant beginning to the trip, the glacier was totally worth any grumblings at the beginning. We walked through the forest to get there, and then climbed over this giant rock (ordinarily, you can just walk out directly, but the glacier river had recently changed paths, so we had to maneuver the rock) complete with ladders, chains, and rails. It was pretty cool. We got to wear crampon spikes, and then we climbed up onto the ice!

Climbing up the glacier wasn't as dramatic as it sounds, since the guides cut out stairs from the ice to climb up, but it's pretty slippery and you have to make sure you're using your crampons right. The first part of the glacier is kind of this ugly gray, dirty color, but once you get past that, it's really wavy bright white ice that's really cool. We got to go through lots of really narrow channels, which are the most fun part because you kind of feel like a penguin sliding around in-between cracks. There were some parts where we got to climb up an ice cave, walk through crevasses, and one part we got to do some ice climbing and pull ourselves up with a rope through this super narrow area (I actually got stuck...my pack was too fat, and I couldn't move for a couple seconds...it was kind of embarrassing). Since we did a full-day hike, we got to hike up high enough so that we could see blue ice and go through one of the biggest ice caves on the entire glacier. We got really lucky too, and got gorgeously clear weather even though by all forecasts it was supposed to rain (both NZ weather and NZ forecasts are notoriously unpredictable and unreliable).

After a nice long day on the glacier, we came back to our super-cute hostel and lounged in the outdoor hot tub (so nice!) and made some really yummy pumpkin/roast garlic risotto, and watched terrible New Zealand soap operas and called it an early night. The next day we had a cruisy, relaxing morning and spent the whole day just exploring town, walking around, taking in views of the glacier, eating good food, and generally enjoying ourselves. It was really nice to have some down-time.

My first final exam is this Saturday--that's right, it's on a Saturday...it's every student's worst nightmare to have to study for an exam on Friday night and take it on Saturday--and I actually ran into the lecturer at the supermarket today. I felt like a second-grader who's just discovered that teachers live in town and go out and do things, but I got nervous and didn't want him to see me when I could have been studying for his exam, so I hid behind the bread display until he passed. It was mildly mortifying.

I made brownies last night, marking the very first time I have ever made brownies from scratch! Until I was about fifteen, I legitimately thought that everybody made brownies from a box, since that's all we ever did. It was surprisingly easy though, and they turned out so good that I snuck out of bed at 6:30 this morning when I was awake to go eat one and then promptly went back to sleep.

PICTURES:

The glacier is absolutely huge and makes everybody look tiny.

Crampon attack! Except Patrick almost fell over and spiked me in the face and it was incredibly close to becoming a massive ice disaster.

Me in a really cool ice cave.

You can almost see how it looks like a giant wave just got frozen into ice instantaneously.

You can see just how high up the glacier goes--we went up there! Up to the blue/clean white part.

Ice tunnel! So cool! This is after I un-stuck myself.

Crevasse.

You can see that at the beginning, our guide chopped out stairs with his ice pick for us to climb up.

Me and Patrick in a narrow part.

The full glacier, looming ahead.

From here, the glacier was still 2.3 km away! It is so huge.

Dan, me, Drea, Alice, Patrick.

Me and Patrick again.

You can see that all of the ice is really bumpy, not so smooth.