Thoughts.com Blogs - Monday,Tuesday, Wednesday June 9, 10,11

View Blog

Monday,Tuesday, Wednesday June 9, 10,11

I arrived just in time for my guided hike i booked. It was a beautiful day, perfect for hiking on the glacier, not wet or hot where ice can melt and rocks or ice chunks can fall. The glacier was out in the rainforest. It moves an average of 25 cm a day! and had carved out a huge area over the years of moving and becoming larger. The hike to the glacier was tough work! uphil for a 1.5 tons of really tall stairs, and with little legs your quads are shaking and want to give out after so many! Even the guys with long legs were complaining they were big steps! There was waterfalls, mountains, snow capped and not, and spring water rivers that we'd fill our water bottles up at, delicious and so cold! We had crampons (spiky shoes) for climbing on the ice and poker sticks as well. We had a pretty good size group, and my guide was from Texas and a hottie! haha. I met a really nice couple from Hong Kong, and a girl from New York who goes to school in Colorado who has lots of hockey friends from Wisconsin. She is goin there this summer cause her two best friends met at camp manitowish and are getting married in Minoqua! imagine that, the place my family camps at every year! Anyway, the glacier of course was awesome and the entire scenery around it. we went into tunnels of ice and under arches of ice, by dripping waterfall ice, in huge holes, everything you can imagine. Guys have to come out everymorning and hack away at the ice where they created steps and paths, or within two days it will be gone. We were out there for a total of about 4 hours. That night i stayed at a nice hostel that had a huge room called the "movie room" with old movie theater seats and a big screen. I watched a really weird new zealand movie just to be in the 'moment' of the country ahha. They also had all kinds of spices set out in the kitchen area for people to use! I left early the next morning again to catch a bus to Hokitika, the capital of Jade (stone) of the country, a small nothing really town with a gorge and an airport, (my reason for going there) I just had less than 24 hours there so I pretty much just relaxed and kind of checked out the city. My roomate from japan, and older woman who came to work in New zealand for a year and didn't like her job, so she quit after 7 months and now just traveling since she has the visa. She and I went to a Glow Worm thing, which was cool. We just walked in the woods on a path and they literally just glow like glow sticks. They are actually moths, well the worm of a moth, attracting a mate and food i believe it said. next day i flew out of the ghetto-ist smallest airport ever. It was like a shed. Walk outside and up two steps, duck your head, and if your 5'2" like me, once inside you could stand up straight and be hitting your head on the ceiling! haha The plane had 5 windows on the side. haha I took that to Christchurch and then another to wellington.