franz josef village feels like a lifetime ago. the day we last wrote, we had beer for dinner - at least a schnitzel (7 beers), as nico says. we didn't plan it that way, but it was pissing down and we sat on a swing on the verandah at our chateau franz (not quite as glam as it sounds) and, well, we just didn't move for hours - except to go to the fridge and back. and when that was empty, we went to the pub. we did think about dinner. and we ate some of the free soup, but sitting on that swing, watching the rain pour down and drinking our tui was pretty damn satisfying.
it did, however, make for a difficult morning the next day - and we had a glacier to climb! well, maybe climb is a bit misleading, we didn't go to the top (our guide had never been to the top either), but we did spend near on six hours hiking WITH CRAMPONS (the very idea of which scared me), and even ice axes! well, our ice axes were really only for show, they helped with steep ice climbing, but they weren't to be used for axe-like purposes - that sort of activity was restricted to the guides...and their nice legs...oh, sorry, daydreaming...
but seriously, the guides were excellent. they really knew what they were doing and ours was particularly no nonsense and gave us good safety info. unfortunately, due to the seriously high volume of rain there had been recently, our guides spent a great deal of time carving out new tracks for us which was cool, but not scintillating to watch - oh, except for his legs!
and there were some parts of the glacier that we couldn't go to, because they were just too unstable. i'm sure you all heard about the guys from melbourne who met their unfortunate demise at the behest of an unstable glacier. it was pretty scary. before i even knew about that it was scary, because there are these things they call 'moulins' (the french word for windmill), which look like a little puddle on the glacier, but they're actually a very deep hole, sometimes 100m deep which, should you step into, would deliver you to an icy death.
clearly, we survived. but it was a long day. the next day we decided to hitch to queenstown coz we had a booking to do the routeburn track, which we'd made back in october - lucky, coz some, like our israeli mates, couldn't get on that track coz it was booked out. we didn't get moving particularly early, coz we aren't much good at that. and we kinda didn't realise just how far it was. in fact, the advice we'd been given at doc (dept of conservation), was that it would only take five and a half hours. it took a while to get our first ride, then a fellow tramper picked us up and took us just as far as the fox glacier. nice kiwi bloke, told us we'd be 'blown away' by the routeburn.
took a while to get our next ride, but it was a sunday and i guess it was a particuarly touristy route. the main highway down the west coast, yes, but not a whole lotta kiwi traffic going by. and it was mostly kiwis who gave us rides. so, just to prove me wrong, our next hitch was with a fairly strange bloke from york. well, via manitoba, canada. yes, he had a singsong lilt we could barely make sense of ("next stop poob", he said to nico at some point, to receive only a blank stare in reply) , and he was a grain farmer who was driving around the entire country without a clue about it. but, to be fair, he drove us abbout 400km and we woulda been stuffed without him.
so, when around 7pm he finally threw us out in queenstown, we bought ourselves some zubrowka to celebrate our success! and the next day, after a helluva breakfast at bob's weigh (HIGHLY recommended), we started the routeburn track...aka the routeburn river! so, the truth is it's a beautiful track which takes you pretty much from glenorchy (not far from queenstown) and mt aspiring national park to milford (of the world famous milford sound) and fiordland national park. it's brilliant, because it is something like 350km by road, but only 32km on foot!
but, what they don't tell you is that the route burn is a river. and you don't walk it, you SWIM it. our first day was ok. not brilliant weather, but clear and warm enough and a nice cruisy 2hr~ish walk. we took a lot of photos of water, not realising just how wet we would become in the coming days. the next morning we had a lovely sleep in, and postponed the start of our 13.6km tramp, hoping the rain might ease off. it didn't. if anything, it got worse. it was a little disappointing, because most of that day was spent above the treeline and the views, had we seen them, would have been astonishing. honestly, try these on for size...
http://www.mytravelbackpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/163-jeremy-scenery-routeburn-track.jpg
http://203.86.194.7/Images/craigPotton/262.jpg
but we contented ourselves, with getting completely saturated, declaring ourselves mountain heroes yet again, and having a waterfight, just to make sure there weren't any dry patches. and dry patches there were not. which at the end of the day i discovered actually included everything INSIDE my backpack as well. i think it was the first hint of a bad mood in our entire trip. when i nearly cried because i did not even have a dry pair of knickers, not a stitch to wear AND my sleeping bag was wet too.
to his credit, ponyboy took control of the situation. found somehow in his pack that contained SO FEW clothes (especially compared to mine that even had a frock for new year's), an entire clean dry change for both of us and enough sleeping bag warmth to start me snoring in about three mins flat. well done, ponyboy! when i woke up he cooked us dinner, using such creative implements as a tennis racquet, and all was well again.
we did have to put our wet clothes on again the next morning, walk for another four hours or so in the rain, camp in a swamp, sleep through a thunderstorm with lightning in both directions the next day, but somehow none of that was as bad as that one moment without dry knickers. unfortunately again, we could see only very brief glimpses of the view on the final day. but we've since heard that this is very common - and seen pictures of trampers on the milford track at the same time as us, but they were waist deep in water at points! and i thought i was wet!!
when we finished the tramp and got to milford, we were told it had been raining like that for two weeks straight, since the 30th of december. and even for somewhere that apparently gets 7m of rain a year, that was frustrating for the locals. a little frustrating for us too, when we went on a cruise on milford sound and again could see very little.
luckily, and we were very lucky for a lot of our trip, it cleared up in the afternoon and the company operating the cruise let us go again in the afternoon! so, when we finally jumped on our bus, we were pretty cheerful, although nico was feeling the effects of so much wet, cold weather and had a sore throat. nothing a snooze on the bus, followed by a movie and ice cream in te anau couldn't fix tho! yes, we saw quantam of solace! and what a luxury a cinema was.
up again early the next morning, we were on a bus to invergumboot (also known as invercargill), and onto bluff and stewart island! foolishly, we hadn't booked the ferry, so we spent an unplanned entire day in bluff. but it was nice enough. we took a hike for a few hours, and rewarded ourselves with VB and fish n chips, or "feesh n cheeps" as i apparently pronounce it!! then, finally around 5pm, we were on the ferry and on our way to that funny little outpost stewart island, which is almost entirely national park and where nico tried to teach me to say "nichts", oh so many times, to the point where a bloke in the pub thought we were having an argument. i mean to say!
the rakiura track (rakiura is the maori name for stewart island) is a three day tramp, which takes you on a loop from oban (the township on the island), inland and back along the coast. it, the track and the tramps on the island in general, are renowned the mud and muddy it is! it is also, however, fairly easy to avoid the mud. if you're not me and if you don't walk...ohhh...straight through the middle of a knee-deep mud puddle. oh, did nico laugh whilst i clung to a tree and wailed. to be fair, it was first thing in the morning. even if our mornings did start around 11, it was early, in my book. anyway, just wait till you see the photos.
so, it was a great walk and despite the number of stairs, we bloody loved it. i got a bit melancholy coz it was our last tramp and our holiday was coming to an end. but i think i didn't sook too much. so, all that's left is timaru, which we visited solely for the purpose of going to the tui brewery, and christchurch, which we visited purely for the purpose of leaving. we got as much as we could out of both places, and stayed up all night in christchurch ~ the first place we'd found in new zealand that really actually resembled a city, a-mazing!~
and now i'm home. and sadly, back to work tomorrow. so, this is goodnight. do vstrechi Xx
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