Fox Glacier and Lake Matheson

With a pre-booked trip to the glaciers Ryan and I went to meet with the other group of people doing the ice trekking. There were only two other couples, so a total of six quests. Apparently the company did not have too much to do, so they offered 3 guides for us, one for every 2 people, maybe a little overkill.
The company had rain gear, boots and crampons for us, which meant I could leave all my own gear behind and not have to worry about breaking that. Furthermore, the rain jacket handed out were more rubberish and probably better in rain than those thin high tech rain jackets.
The access road to the glacier had been closed because some big boulders had fallen onto the road, and the government thought it was a little too exciting to let people drive there. So instead we all got loaded onto a bus, so in case a rock did fall down and hit the vehicle, we would all die. Good plan
The breakfast today consisted of a couple of Monster Energy cans and some müsli bars, already there the guides started looking at us without saying anything though.
Ryan had brought his own rain paints, apparently unaware of the length of them, because he had 20-30 cm of pants not covered, looked very fashionable.
One of the guides was a little British guy, he didn't look very old, more like someone that was in the Harry Potter movies. When we asked him how old he was, he said 18. He had only been doing this for a couple of weeks, so we had almost as much experience as him, haha. He was funny though, the other two were a little more stiff.
At some point I grabbed the little guys axe for a picture, immediately the other guide told me to watch myself and others when holding the axe. Come on man, I guess that's how people are in Minnesota?
Some stretch of the trail had some stairs on the side of the mountain, they wanted us to hold onto a chain at all times. Most of the treks we have been on so far have been at least as dangerous here and there, instead they just had a sign saying Caution, these guys were almost freaking out. They told us not to take any pictures, but of course I had to take one of Ryan there, not very popular, haha
The guides spent most of the time chopping steps into the ice, Ryan and I spent most of the time climbing everything else but where the guides wanted us to go, haha. I don't even think I got that much attention in the kidnergarden as here, it was quite annoying and unnecessary 
It was pretty cool walking on the ice with the crampons, kind of like spikes for the boots, made it possible to walk up slants of slippery ice. The huge cracks in the ice were cool to climb around on and in, here the crampons really showed their power, by letting us walk on the wall. Many places the melting water had a found a way down and created some deep man size holes, if anyone were to fall in there, it is probably game over.
The huge cracks in the ice is created with the glacier goes over the rock floor that has a decline, the ice on top of the glacier has to move the most and eventually has to crack to let the ice keep moving.
From a distance the glacier looks like a big dirty pile of snow, but when you get close you realize that these things are in fact stones and boulders. A lot of these have fallen onto the ice from the vertical cliff walls, but it was kind of interesting how so many rocks of the same size ended up in the same place? Some rocks were small and some were bigger, but about every 5-6 minutes we heard stones fall down the cliffs.
Only heard the sound of falling rocks though and maybe that is better than seeing one of these boulders roll down the mountain trying to outrun it.
The weather had not really been as nice as the weather forecast said, early in the morning it had started raining and the the visibility was not too good. Later in the afternoon it got better though, but by then it was a little too late. On the other hand, the weather made the entire experience seem a little more real, I mean, you don't usually connect walking on a glacier with people dressed for the beach, do you?
The trip cost us $159 and for that we got, well, almost nothing. No food, no drinks, just some crampons and boots and a guided tour. Everyone else I have been talking to that did the trek, complained about the price for what it was. It was way too much babying, we were treated like 10 year old.
To me it was quite interesting though to be on the glacier and see it with my own eyes, walk around in a very new environment that not many people get to try. A few days later the ice would have changed and would not be the same anymore.
We met with the other guys in the evening, where I invited them out for food and beer to celebrate my last day in Nokia. We ended up a little tipsy late at night in some country kind of bar, where probably all 40 people of the city was as well.
Next morning we were to go down South, but made a detour to the lake again as the weather was really good and most of the peaks were visible now and then in the clouds.

We walked around the lake once again and this time we were not dumb enough to turn around half way. We got to the other side of the lake and even though there was a tiny bit of movement on water, it was quite a spectacular view we had of the mountains reflected through the lake. It doesn't even get this good if done in Photoshop. And it was free!

Franz Josef Glacier, Lake Matheson and BBQ

Early morning in Franz Josef village we wanted to extend with another day at the hostel, to which the little grumpy hostel owner answered no. He said he had found out that we had two guys sleeping in the car on the street, and that was illegal in Franz Josef village. We decided to leave the little man alone and took off laughing at him... Fool
Today it was good weather and it was time to visit the glacier. There were different options to go onto the glacier, helicopter, full and half day hikes or just see it from a distance. Since the two Chilean guys were not so interested in paying for it, we decided to go there and see how close we could get.
We walked for almost an hour from the car park passing a lot of beautiful waterfalls with super clear water that we could drink. It seems that no matter how many waterfalls we keep seeing, they always look impressive.
The path where we were walking was the part of where the glacier had been before, but now it had retreated a few hundred meters. There was still a river from the glacier, but not very deep and too much water, there were plenty of signs that there at times is a lot more water flowing around the valley.
When we came closer to the glacier, there were signs that access to the glacier was from 150 meters away. Well, didn't really know how that would look, so we continued.
We then reached the tourist section which was marked with ropes and signs not to go any further because the risk was too big.
Well, being young and stupid, the other guys young and me stupid, we had to see what was so dangerous.
We met a couple of people coming back from the unauthorized walk, they told us to stay on the path and we would be just fine. Off we went.
The path actually went all the way up the glacier and was the one the guided tours used, so the sign was mostly to benefit the glacier guiding company. At some point we did agree that we probably shouldn't walk further on, after all we are not morons.
Thank you Mr Ranger, high five. For a first time glacier experience, this was pretty good. We met some of the people on the was back that actually did the hike, they were small, big, think and thick, if they can do it, anyone can do it.
Since the little man with the big beard had more or less thrown us out of the Franz Josef, and most probably contacted every hostel within the city not to let us stay, we had to find a new place the night.
The next day we wanted to do the real glacier hike at the Fox Glacier, so we decided to drive there and find a hostel.
The drive to Fox village was not too long, maybe 30 minutes or so and after dropping our stuff at the hostel, we drove out in the area for some sight seeing.
There was a lake where we should be able to get some good pictures of the entire mountain range, but after walking around the lake for half an hour, we decided to turn back as there were still no good photo spot.
We met a Spanish girl also walking around the lake and she chose to continue. We met her back at the hostel afterward where she showed us some of her pictures, damn!
We went back to a cafe and had a beer relaxing a bit with a view of the mountains, not too bad. We were hoping for the clouds to clear, but they seemed to get thicker and started covering the mountain peaks in thick blankets of cloud.
We decided to make some burgers that evening, as the hostel had a nice BBQ for use. Finding stuff for the burgers was difficult though, there was only one shop in town and they didn't really have too much of anything. Ended up getting frozen patties and some sausages, which at the end did do the trick. Funny though,when it was time to eat, one of the Chilean guys asked if this was vegetarian and I said, no of course not. Well, he happened to be a vegetarian, so what could he then eat? hahaha, why didn't this come up a bit earlier when we bought the food?

Arthurs Pass

The weather was not as great as promised, but we headed for Arthurs pass anyways. It was quite a long drive and pretty flat, that was until we hit the pass itself. At that point the car had quite some difficulties to get up the hills, passing the posted speed signs of 80 kmh, with 30-40kmh. This car may fit 4-5 people, but that is either downhill or on a flat surface only.
Decided to pull over on a view point to give the car a rest and to take a look at the valley we just went up. Seconds after parking the car, we were almost attacked by a group of big birds, landing on the car, trying to eat the rubber from the windshield wipers and doors. They were not exactly tame, but kind of used to humans for sure. They didn't care too much when we tried to scare them away, they would just jump on the other side of the car and keep picking at the rubber.
We gave them some cup noodles and they seemed to like it, posing for pictures and even pecking my camera once to see if it was edible. A few minutes later a huge bus arrived and 50 elderly tourists stormed out of the bus tramping each other to get pictures of those birds.
We continued down the the DOC office, New Zealands Department of Conservation, to get some information about good hikes and trails in the national park. I asked about the birds and he said that they were the clowns of the mountains, Kea birds. We should not feed them, because human food would kill them
The ranger suggested go further South and do a 4 hour hike in an area that had the best weather that day. We took off and had some difficulties finding the beginning. Asked a couple of people who were also looking for the trail, so not much help there. Eventually we found a sign that said visitor parking and decided that must be it.
The trail was quite a lot of uphill right away, but we were rewarded with a quite spectacular view after just an hour. The trail went through forests, swamps, cliffs and meadows, more or less going uphill all the time.
I didn't want to leave my laptop in the car, so I was carrying my backpack with me all the way to the top, with rain gear, jackets and lots of drinks. At least I brought stuff, one of the Chilean guys thought this was going to be a walk in the park (well it was, kind of) but he didn't bring any water. Kind of annoying to have to share some with him anyway, but didn't want to carry him down, so probably easier.
We eve'ntually reached our goal, a little 6 persons hut that was being used by overnight hikers. We had spent somewhere around 2 hours to get there, and had been drinking a little too many energy drinks I guess. At least we decided to continue to the top of the hill we could see behind the hut, it didn't look that high...
Around an hour later, we found ourselves on the hilltop, but this time quite exhausted. Every time we thought we had reached the top, there was another summit hiding behind it, that happened maybe 6 times.
The hill climb had been quite steep, but now we found ourselves on the very top of the ridge with a magnificent view in all directions.

On the mountains a bit further South, there was snow and we were almost at the same height as those peaks. There were huge valleys, rivers, snow capped mountain peaks, lots of ridges surrounding the big river carving through the valley floor

My feet were not feeling too good yet, even though they were taped up pretty good. I decided to head down a bit before the others. It was a long and painful walk down the steep trail for 2 hours, the feet really being squeezed in the shoes. The only thing that kept me going at that point was the fact that I knew there were a couple of beers in the the trunk of the car. I made it down changed my clothes and had a beer waiting for the others, and within 5 minutes I had gotten 15 new sand-fly bites. I don't know how many thousand times bigger I am compared to them, but those small bugs are really starting to irritate me a lot at this point.
Arthur's pass is a beautiful place to visit and hike. If we would have had a few more days I could easily have done some longer hike with overnight stays there
After having been to Arthur's pass, we made a long stint of driving to reach Franz Josef Glacier village. The weather next morning was supposed to be very good, and I for sure wanted to experience the glaciers in nice weather.
On the way there we realized that it would be quite late before arriving in the village, so we decided to call and see if any of the hostels had room. Only one of them responded and asked if we were driving and when Ryan answered yes, he hung up. Apparently this guy had some kind of problem, so we called him again and once again he asked if we were driving, to what Ryan asked what that had to do with getting a bed in the hostel - he hung up again. What an annoying person.
We arrived at the village and called him again from his parking lot, he came and met us and immediately we could see that he was a tiny little man with a need of being in control. Ryan and I got a room with two other girls, the Chilean guys decided to stay in the car overnight to save some money. Good night

Pancake rocks

Without a clear destination, we set off from Nelson. We wanted to check out the Arthurs pass next morning as the weather was nice, but weren't sure where to stay overnight yet. We were driving through a couple of national parks, very beautiful and non-disturbed, this looks very much like something out of Jurassic Park. The roads were very windy, that was quite amusing, at least for the driver, haha
As soon as we hit the West coast again it had started to rain a little bit, but it wasn't too bad though. Having been driving inland for a few hours, we finally hit the coast, where we found a beach with some quite powerful waves. We went to the beach to get a close look, Ryan wanted to check out the temperature of the water, and thought he could jump on of the waves. The wave turned out to be a little bigger than first anticipated, it swept his feet away under him, he lost his balance and landed face down in the water, almost losing his flip flops. Very entertaining to look at
Five minutes further down the road we found the pancake rocks. They are indeed like pancakes stacked on top of each other. The waves have been pounding these things for quite a while and they have started to give way here and there, leaving some very interesting caves and towers.
There are blow holes where the water has eaten away a big hole underneath a surface and finally gotten through the top surface as well, the result is a sprout like from a whale whenever water is pushed into the cave.
In other spots the water has undermined big sections of rock and eventually the rock will fall to the ocean. They have created some kind of small park on the pancake rocks that have not yet fallen to the ocean, but by the looks of it, that will fall too some day. It was raining when we were there, and that for sure didn't help on the experience. Some things just look a lot better when seen in sunshine.
We arrived to Greymouth city in the early evening, the two Chilean guys had met some Spanish girls that they were meeting with again. The hostel didn't have room for anything else than camping though, so Ryan and I ended up in another small hostel a few minutes away.
That gave me some time to check out the feet that I had been abusing so hard the last couple of weeks. Blood blisters, blisters under blisters, broken skin, missing skin, they were quite frankly not in a very good shape. I promised that at some point, my feet would get a treatment normally only offered to kings, but that has to wait a little. For now they have to survive with tape, bandaids and a knife cutting the worst blisters now and then. Sorry poor feet

Abel Tasman hike

New Zealand has endless places to hike, but nevertheless they have nominated a few trails to be the best in the country, they call them the Great Walks, the premier walking tracks of New Zealand. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing was one of them, did that on the North Island and yes, it was pretty spectacular. Time to tick another one of the list, The Able Tasman Coast Track.
We were packing backpacks in the hostel after a visit to the nearest supermarket, and I was pretty proud of my own. 4 days and 3 nights at some of the most beautiful coastline in New Zealand.
I had come up with the perfect combination: 3 strong beers (10%), 3 cans of tuna (lemon pepper variant), a plate of dark chocolate and a backup of mint just in case, 3 cups of Shin Noodle (the best there is, period), 2 packs of Chocofanter ripoffs and a variety of granola with all sorts of fillings. That combined with my new camping equipment, I was ready to take on the NZ beaches, how hard could it be?
In New Zealand hiking is not called hiking, but instead tramping. It makes sense when thinking about it, but still it sounds funny to me.
Neither Ryan or I had a tent, so Alvaro was kind enough to borrow us his tent and share Nubian's tent, then we didn't have to invest in another tent, that was great. From left to right, representing Chile, we have Alvaro, Ryan from Canada, Nubian from Chile and the guy behind the keyboard.
With a backpack around 17 kilos and blisters still not healed from the previous hike, we headed off. I mean, how difficult could it be.
The track went through a lot of rain forest with beach access every now and then to some pretty awesome beaches only found in the movies. We were not the only ones who had ever heard about this area, there were plenty of boats around the area with people just coming there for the day to enjoy the beaches. They were suntanning when a couple of guys with big backpacks walk by.
Some of the areas were just too great to walk past, so we made sure to visit all of them, even if some of them were a little out of the way we were walking.
The track had a couple of places where there was no path through the forest because there were cliffs and it wasn't suitable to make a path there.
However, these places had big bays that could be crossed at low tide. Since there is only low tide twice a day, we had to plan our days according to the tidal times.
The lady at the red lipstick lady had done that the day before for us and booked the right campsites. There was a 4 hour window to cross the bays, so it was quite flexible, but still a lot of kilometers between two crossings so doing more than one a day was tricky.
The first campsite we came to was called Bark Bay, where we had the beach 10 meters away from our tents, really nice. There were some primitive toilets and a building with some running water serving as a kitchen with running water. The water had to be treated though, I brought my filtering bottle, so it was nice finally having a use for it.
The first day we had been hiking about 21km, with our full backpacks, the hiking boots of mine were still not compatible with my feet and I had gotten a few blisters here and there, 7 of them. Both pinky toes, the side of the foot and on the knuckle of the big toe bone. Some of the blisters were on top of the Tongariro blisters, so they were pretty bad, blood had to be drained from those every morning and they hurt quite a lot.
Had forgotten to fill up my first aid bag with additional band aids so had to use toilet paper and duct tape to make my own, or just put tape on top to avoid further friction. People were looking very concerned when I was sitting there with the knife cutting the blisters open, no worries, everything is under control.
In the morning we could cross another bay that had been full of water when we had arrived, now all empty with boats just stranded on the bottom. A guy was fixing something on his boat, at the bottom of it, quite easy for him to fix without having to lift the boat and dry dock it.
The walking the next couple of days were about 10-12 per day, and again took us past a lot of beautiful beaches and through landscape in the jungle that offered some really cool views from points on top of the ridges overlooking the beaches.
There were a couple of swinging bridges that were really swinging when crossing over. Get the steps right and it would swing violently, but only funny for the person doing it.
Since my feet were in quite bad shape I could only do one long stint every day, taking breaks was quite painful as the blood would starting pumping down to the feet when I was resting.
That meant I did a lot of walking on my own as the other guys needed breaks now and then and also wanted to stop and relax at some of the beaches. I didn't mind that, had a lot of time to enjoy what I wanted to do and see.
One day I was in pretty bad shape, didn't walk that fast and actually expected the guys to catch up with me any time. At some point I came to a sign that said "Lodge and Cafe" - hmmm, I am definitely going that way even if it means I have to go back up the same way.
I walked down the hillside for about half an hour or so and found a bar in the middle of the jungle, I thought I was dreaming. I walked up to the bar and they even had beers on tap, I couldn't stop laughing and the guy looked strangely at me. I ordered a beer, said down and enjoyed it, thinking the guys would show up any moment now. They didn't, so I ordered another beer, just because I deserved it and when that was empty they still had not arrived.
Hmm, what should I do? I had the tent for Ryan and myself, but didn't carry any of the food. If they were hungry, they would figure out to survive. I asked the bar if they had a menu, and they did. This was getting too funny, but hey, why not just take advantage of the options offered? I ordered a pepperoni pizza, expected a frozen re-heat pizza to be taken out of the freezer, but instead it was a home made pizza... I was just one big smile and downed it with another beer.
Well fed, no longer thirsty and just feeling in a good mood, I emptied my water bottle and asked to have it filled up with beer for the guys, I thought they deserved some cold beer as well. 5 minutes later I was on my way to the campsite which was only 30 minutes away. They guys still had not arrived, so I ended up splitting the cold beer with two German girls instead, haha
The campsite had approximately 134334253 mosquitoes and sand flies living there, it was horrible. We all dressed up with all our clothes and blankets to avoid being eaten alive, but they were everywhere. Ended up going to bed just after 20:00 because it was the only place that was not full of these critters. Next morning though we all woke up with big bumps and bites on the foreheads, and the tent full of sand flies and mosquitoes, but no idea how they got into the tent. For those unfamiliar with the sandfly, they are simple horrible. Their bite hurts, bleeds and is more itchy than a mosquito bite - and they seem to be everywhere
The last campsite we came to, I arrived pretty early on a very windy the afternoon. There were already a couple of people at the campsite, and they had picked some of the good spots where there was the least wind. Turned out they were from the US as well, up North in Seattle.
I put my tent up in the same end, maybe 3 meters from their tent. I laid down to relax a little and have one of my 10% warm beers, when an old guy came up and started talking to me. He asked me where I was from and what kind of work I did. Then he asked me if I knew what etiquette  meant, of course I said. Oh, you putting up the tent close to me and my friends is very bad etiquette, we think it is better if you move your tent. WTF? Why didn't these old farts stay in a hotel instead, good thing I am grown up and mature...
The next day we did the last stint, to the Separation point, the place where the two "oceans" meet. On on side it was all rowdy and on the other blue and totally calm, looked pretty interesting. This was officially the end of the hike, but we still had to walk back another 6km to get a lift back from one of the water taxis serving the coasts here. We were done walking around 14:30, but were not dropped off at the car until 18:00, pretty worn and tired.
We went to buy some beers and back at the hostel it was a very quiet night. The hike had been great, too many sandflies in my opinion, but I was told that it could be much worse at times.
The hike is said to take 5 days, it can easily be done in 3 with the right shoes and getting the timing right with the low tide. One guy I met earlier suggested we just take the water taxi up to the beach were we got picked up and do a short trek, because most of the beaches and bays we would see looked pretty much the same. He was kind of right and probably that is the way to do it if short on time, but we had a good time, it was fun