Jess Wanders Off

Merry Christmas everyone! This is delayed a couple of days because I’ve been on the road, but I hope everyone’s holidays have gone well. In Wanaka I had a lovely sleepless night for Christmas Eve, because a trio of German girls decided to get far too inebriated, and consequently spent the night (beginning around 4:30 in the morning) puking into a bucket in our room. Really charming.

After wandering around Wanaka a bit more Christmas morning (nothing is open), I finally caught my bus to Queenstown at around 2 in the afternoon. It was about a 2, 2 1/2 hour drive, and then I had to deal with transport from Queenstown to my hotel, which is technically in Fernhill (up a steep, steep, steep hill from Queenstown’s town center, and therefore NOT something I wanted to hike up with my backpack on).

Once I was able to get up to Fernhill, I relaxed for awhile, took a long steamy shower (it’s so nice to be in a hotel instead of a hostel), and then strolled back down to Queenstown (the hill’s ok downhill, of course) to meet my buddy Dan for dinner. Dan’s driving me to Te Anau and keeping me company for the 26th and 27th. We had Turkish take-out in the pouring rain. We also had some really good New Zealand red wine (this is actually the first time I’ve had any wine from New Zealand).

Queenstown is beatiful, really stunning, 20 times better than Wanaka (although I know such a statement mind offend some people!) I can’t wait to get back here and get some nice pictures of it. It’s situated on a lake, like Wanaka, but it’s far more spectacular scenery, and the town (though touristy) is larger than Wanaka and feels more urban, which is nice for a change.

So I apologe that my day was not interesting or blog-worthy, but hey, it was Christmas 🙂

Well, not a lot to report, as today was mostly a travel day. I caught the 8 am bus from Franz Josef to Fox, which is a nearby town (like 35 mins away) with a glacier of its own. I took an hour’s walk around Lake Matheson near Fox. It was drizzling but I still managed to get a couple of nice shots, especially of the reflection in the lake of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman:

After that I caught another bus down to Wanaka. This was a good 5 hours or so. We made a few stops, including Knight’s point, which was pretty, although the gnats around here are unbearable.

When we arrived in Wanaka, it was a gorgeous sunny day, totally unlike the wet and cold morning I’d had in Fox. Wanaka is beautiful; it sits on the edge of Lake Wanaka and is very picturesque. After getting settled at my hostel (Wanaka Bakpaka) I took a long walk around the lake and took some more photos. Very beautiful and peaceful place, although pretty touristy.

I also passed by some very pretty vineyards:

Alright, well, more tomorrow! Happy Christmas Eve everyone! Enjoy the photos.

Flowers Near Lake Wanaka:

Well, today I did the full-day hike up to and on Franz Josef Glacier, and it was really spectacular.  I was actually dreading this part of the trip due to my lack of athleticism but we actually went at a reasonable pace (either that or all my running back home is paying off!)  Not that it wasn’t strenuous at times, because it was!

From afair the glacier looks like a giant spill of ice mixed with dirt, nestled between two mountains.  I took one look at that and immediately thought, “Holy sh*t, I can’t climb this.”

When we first got to the terminal face (this is the giant sheet of ice that you must scramble up at the beginning to get on top of the glacier) I was trying very hard not to panic.  I’m not really built for glacier adventures.  I’m built for kicking back on a nice soft couch, beer in hand, watching a Mavericks game.  Our guide had us strap on our “Ice Talonz” (the z makes all the difference there) and then we got ready to go.  The Ice Talonz are basically these spikes that you stick onto the bottom of your hiking boots.  When I saw those instruments of torture I got even more scared.  But I didn’t have to worry.  They’re INCREDIBLY great at gripping the ice, and felt very comfortable once you had them on the ice (on the rocks they were a bit awkward).

So after we were all situated with our Talonz on our feat, we headed toward the terminal face.  There is an incredibly steep staircase here that the guides cut by hand (with their oh-so-sexy pickaxes) that we were expected to ascend, holding on only to a rope that they fixed along the side.  It was realllllly steep, but surprisingly not as bad as it looks.  I was only mildly gasping for breath when we were done.  Here’s a picture of the terminal face — see the staircase?  It’s in the middle.  On either side were sluices of water running down the terminal face.  Today was a very warm day, and the glacier was hard at work melting.

After we had gotten a fair ways up the terminal face, we started to see some incredible ice formations.  The ice down here is very dirty, since it’s intermingled with all the sediment:

Little pools of water are everywhere here.  It took us about a good couple of hours to get out to where the ice was less dirty.  We stopped to catch our breaths and look back the way we had come.  It was a gorgeous view back toward town, but it’s a good thing I’m not prone to vertigo!  We were hiiiiiiiigh up.

After a 15 minute lunch break we were off again, and the ice formations started to get more interesting.  We had a few shelves we had to sidle through, and you could start to see the gorgeous pure blue ice starting to peek out:

There was also a really pretty waterfall that snaked down the edge of a nearby cliff.  It was really a tall waterfall.  Here’s a picture of me, all bundled up and looking like the Abominable Snowman, in front of the waterfall.  Aren’t my Ice Talonz incredibly sexy???

The ice in general is so gorgeous.  I’m really glad I did the full day trip because it meant that we had a full 6 hours on the ice.

But, of course, the best part of all is the blue ice.  It’s incredibly beautiful and there are lots of little caves and crevasses and blue-ice water pools.  It was difficult to focus on photography when we were trying to watch our footing, but I do think I got some spectacular shots:

Looking through the blue ice cave to the sky:

Here’s another picture of me (like the very first one on this post) scampering through a blue ice crevasse:

The following pics may give you a better idea of how blue this ice really is:

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This morning I got up and wandered over to the beach.  In Punakaiki and most of the northern West coast, the sea is very, VERY angry.  It makes a lovely sound as it crashes fiercely onto land.  The walls here are mostly limestone, but they have eroded to make pretty colored layers.  There’s also a lot of runoff from the cliffs.  Here, the runoff has formed a little waterfall:

This area of New Zealand was well-traversed by the Maori.  Many visiting peoples stopped because there was an abundance of wildlife to hunt and medicinal plants to gather.  They also used the coastline’s supply of flax (pictured below) as building material.

Here is some more flax, along with limestone erosion and runoff:

There are supposed to be little tiny blue penguins along this coastline during the summer months, but I didn’t see any.

After that I walked back to town (a good 40 minute walk) and went to see the famous Pancake Rocks.  Basically the only reason Punakaiki is on the tourist map is because of these rocks.  They’re so named because they look like stacks of pancakes.  They are made of limestone and are very pretty.

The best part about the Pancake Rocks is that at high tide (or close to it, which is what it was for me), the water gushes through natural “blowholes” in the rock and creates a wicked spout.  Very cool.

Here is a picture of the Pancake Rocks up close, so you can see the pancakey effect.

So after that I caught my bus down to Franz Josef, south of here.  We stopped at Hokitika, which is a nice enough little town with jade and glass galleries, then continued on toward Franz Josef.

I’m doing an 8-hour full-day tour on the glacier tomorrow (Franz Josef and its sister town Fox are known for their massive glaciers).  Supposedly we will get to see some blue ice.  I probably will be exhausted at the end of the trip so we’ll see how things go.  I hope I just don’t hold everyone up since I’m not the biggest athlete in the world.

I’ll check back later 🙂