Did somebody say "bright and early?!"We left Christchurch before the sun rose and saw another beautiful day arrive. The drive across the island is long and lonely, and in the middle it gets pretty intensely mountainous. We get to the west coast around lunchtime and keep going till we get to Fox Glacier, which apparently is the town's name as well as the big chunk of ice.
You know you're heading out on an adventure when you have to wear rented boots AND socks. I can't say I've ever worn rented socks before, but I enthusiastically pull on two pairs of the thick, green wool things because they don't have any half-size boots. I am starting to worry about how my back is doing. I have been doing my physical therapy exercises pretty religiously on this trip so I hope i'll be OK (for those of you who haven't been avidly following my health and wellness, I had a flare-up of my herniated disc back in mid-January and had to have another round of physical therapy. Good times.)
They also give
us these metal cleat things we'll need to strap on to our feet when we climb on the glacier itself (called "crampons," they simultaneously sound like something you might need at that-time-of-the-month and look like something you'd want to injure someone with if they piss you off during that-time-of-the-month).We take an antique bus up to the glacier's entrance and are told we have a 40-minute hike up 500 stairs in order to get to where we'll walk out onto the glacier, which looks like a big dirty, icy hill. There are some terrifying warning signs: "No stopping next 300 meters" -- what the heck does 300 meters look like?!! -- and one for the non-Engl
ish speakers, with a stick figure falling off a mountain. Yikes. The hike up is not bad; somehow I even end up either second in line or right behind the tour guide at times. I vow to keep in shape once I return home and take up hiking as a hobby this summer (I'll let you all know how that goes).Once we get up the the glacier proper it is cooler than on the ground below, and it starts to rain. The glacier is apparently near or actually in the rainforest, so this isn't unusual. It's pretty amazing -- I can't believe I'm walking on a glacier. I won't bore you with all the sciencey and historical things (the glacier was "that high" in 1760, over there is where people would climb on to it and have picnics in the 1920s) but suffice it to say, it was very cool (ha! pun intended!) .
We head back to terra firma, hand in our crampons, socks and boots and have a little graduation ceremony of sorts where we get a certificate of glacier-walking completion and shake hands with our guides.
Then we drive back to the town just outside the "other local glacier" (yes, there are two glaciers, and yes, we chose Fox Glacier because they had hilarious marketing materials that compared their tour's superb features to those of "other local glacier") where our hotel, called the Rainforest Retreat, is located. We eat dinner at "local pub" called Monsoon: "It Rains, We Pour." And yes, it's still raining.
