Cool

Carefully balancing on the front spikes of the crampons attached to my shoes I remove my right axe from the ice and hammer it as far up as I can. Dividing my weight between my right axe and my feet I remove my let axe and thrust it into the ice as high as I can. After feeling if my axes are in deep enough I shift all my weight to my arms and move feet up step by step. Suddenly the ice under one of my axes crumbles and breaks away. I fall, sliding down the ice. The cold hard surface of the wall grates against my chest. I stop with a thud, a large shock moving through my right arm. My right axe withstood the pressure of my fall and I was now hanging from one arm. Slowly I bring up my left arm and ram the axe in the ice, double checking to make sure the ice is strong enough to hold my weight. A little reluctant I continue my ascend.



But let's not get ahead of ourselves. After the knife making we went up to the pancake rocks and blowholes in the dark. We had to go either in the morning or at night to see the blowholes at high tide, and we'd not morning persons. At first we couldn't see anything and dismissed the blowholes as a lot of nothing, but then suddenly they spewed their watery load several meters in the air. We tried to take pictures, but it was way too dark to capture anything, despite the full moon iluminating the way for us. On the way back I suddenly saw something moving by the side of the road. I saw that it was a creature of some sorts so I took a quick picture. The picture showed a pair of bright red eyes somewhere in the trees. It was a possum! We quickly snapped a dozen pictures, the possum didn't seem afraid of us at all and at one point even got really close to us, but ofcourse moved just as I tried to take a picture.

The following day we hitch-hiked to Greymouth, a particularly grey and ugly looking town. The fact that it was pissing rain probably didn't help either. We decided to book two nights because Jasper wanted to do some quad biking. The rest of the day it didn't stop raining once, all of the grass turned into marshlands and big pools of water started to pop-up everywhere. The next morning we woke up to a sunny day however, and seeing as getting mud is half the fun of riding a quad bike it proved to be a good day. It would just be us two and a guide, so we wouldn't have to wait for any slow drivers or anything like that. After a quick lap through the practice track we headed out onto the track. It started off relatively easy, riding over rocks and through puddles of mud but it gradually got harder. Eventually our guide stopped and told us to put our quads in 4WD, we were starting to get to the hard part. After a long ride up a steep slope we started to go through a forest eventually ending up on the other side of the hill to descend a steep mud covered track. It required some careful maneuvering and half the time I ended up going down sideways. The overall track was quite tricky, but we managed to conquer all obstacles and after 90 minutes we arrived back at the farm.
The next day we headed to the Franz Jozef glacier, the rides hadn't been coming easy in the South Island and this day was no exception, but finally at about 4 pm we arrived in the town of Franz Jozef and booked into a holiday park. We had to pitch our tent on a miniscule patch of grass between the toilets and the playground. We went into the tiny village to book our trip to the glacier, arriving at the booking agency just after a bus load of people arrived. After waiting about 20 minutes we finally got to booking our trip and we decided to go for the ice-climbing, rather than a full-day walk over the glacier, since the ice climbing seemed to include a fair amount of walking as well.
We went to bed early and woke up the next morning at 6:15 still feeling pretty tired after people kept tripping over our tent all night. We showed up at 7:45 exactly on time and were told to sit and wait for the others. 25 Minutes later we were finally assembled and walked across the road to pick up the rest of our gear. Everyone received a pair of overpants, a backpack, a harness, a helmet, crampons, a pair of boots and gloves and a hat. A short 20 minute and a 30 minute walk later we arrived at the glacier where a couple of guides were still cutting out a path up the first steep part. Walking with crampons was awkward while we were still on rocks, but once we got to the ice it felt very natural. A short walk later we arrived at a vertical wall where one of our guides was already working on setting up our safety lines. When the lines were finally up we received instructions on how to use the axes and crampons. The trick was apparently to drive your axes in the ice one by one and then moving your feet up slowly while driving the spike on the front into the ice. Once your helmet reached your axes you'd rest your weight on your feet and move your axes up as far as possible, repeat until your at the top. I was the third person to give it a go and it was easier than I had feared, but slightly harder than I expected. Especially driving your feet into the ice hard enough to acquire some form of support proved to be challenging. After we all tried the wall on to different spots one of the guides moved to change the location of the lines while the rest of us went for a walk through the glacier. The scenery was beautiful and the sun made sure the temperature didn't drop too low. The ice cave we crawled through was bright blue and extremely slippery. After the cave we made our way back through the wall, the guide hacking away steps in the ice at points too tricky to walk down.
The second set of climbs proved to be harder than the first and I was to be the first to try one of them out. On my path, just before the top, was a large hole. I got up there fairly quick and easily but then I had to decide wether I was going to try and go around the hole or try to somehow climb in it. I figured going around was my best bet, but this was easier said than done. I had to move my left hand over the rope and try to get far enough to the right of it to be able to use my left pick as well, because the hole itself offered no spots for my axe at all. Hanging there almost sideways on the wall my axe decided it was enough and I was sent plummiting down, luckily I was attached to the safety rope and after a second of catching my breath I hacked my way back up to the hole and this time made my ay inside it, which proved to be a lot easier than going around. After everyone had their climbs we moved back down to the van and drove back to town.
We had been talking to a German girl during the day and we decided to have a drink in the local bar and play some pool. She was training to be a vet and did her internship here in New Zealand. When we asked if she had any crazy vet stories she said no. When we asked if she had any normal vet stories then she told us the story of how she castrated her own cat during a "bring your pet to school and castrate him/her" day.

Videos of our surf instructor in Gisborne that took us to the rehe rockslides as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gVQ4aizLw8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMTOSwJMn_E&feature=channel

Pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%205/