Saturday, November 03, 2007

The South, 三

After a royal experience at Queenstown, it was time to for Lake Wanaka
Another Typical Post Card Photo
1st September 2007: Fox Glacier Township
Another Christchurch and Queenstown, we knew that we had to mellow down our expectations for Fox Glacier Township. After all, the town seemed to exist solely for the purpose of accommodating tourists.

But nothing could prepare us for this.
Two pictures and that was all that it took to photograph the ENTIRE TOWN.

Just plain puzzling
Despite the dearth of intelligible lifeforms, there still exists a backpacker hostel, aptly named Ivory Towers Lodge.
The corridors were lit with a disturbing Geylang red hue.
Like Hippo Lodge, I thought it was rather homely, complete with a woodfired heater.
The Kitchen and Dining Area
Thanks to the exorbitantly priced meals sold in the town, we were compelled to "cook" some microwaveable food, complete with canned soups.
The uneventful night ended with a series of movies ranging from a standup comedy by Rowan Atkinson, The Piano and Schindler's List.
2nd September 2007: Fox Glacier Township
After losing one day to transport and a drearily boring town, we were finally off to embark on Fox Trot, a half day walk to Fox Glacier.
Fed by four alpine glaciers, Fox Glacier falls 2,600m on its 13km journey from the Southern Alps down to the coast, and although retreating throughout most of the last 100 years, it has been advancing since 1985 at an average of about a meter a day. It is one the most accessible glaciers in the world, thus becoming a major attraction.
Red Rustic Transport
The journey begins...
There was certainly no going back, once we've started.
It wasn't long before we were greeted by an unsightly unimpressive mess of dirty-looking ice.
And the water accompanying it...
Of course, things look much whiter and purer further up...
Yes, it was massive. Probably enough ice to make ice kachang for the whole of humanity; past, present and future.
Wearing steel crampons is a must, to give us traction on the snow and ice.
I thought our guide really spoilt us, literally hacking his way through to create straight paths and steps on slopes.
I guess that wooden stick was supposed to lend us more support and balance.
But it made some look really bad. Heh.
For taking the horrid picture on top, Grace decided to take revenge.
I was just... nonchalant.
A further overdose of iceAlthough the walk was supposed to last for 4 hours, the time spent in the glacier was a miserly one hour... Sianz... Nonetheless, I thought scenery below the glacier was so enthralling, I was inspired to take more pseudo artistic shots.

Agent Orange Rocks
The Green Fights Back
Mineral Water Cooler
Ah... Just after taking the picture below, I clumsily dipped my whole foot inside the river and was promptly rewarded with a slushy wet boot.
With an audible squish in every other step, we reluctantly headed back.
My only natural souvenir from Fox Glacier was water taken from one of the numerous "water coolers". It was probably the most scintillatingly refreshing water I've ever tasted.

2nd September 2007: Fox Glacier Township/Greymouth

Have you ever seen a cow piss before?
They just go on and on and on and on and on and on...MOOOOOOOOOoooooo....

Next up on the itinerary was Greymouth, the largest town in West Coast region on the South Island of New Zealand. While I wouldn't go about to describe the town as LARGE, but it was dimensions bigger than Fox Glacier Township.

Duke Backpackers was our choice of hostel.
Run by an Israeli couple, it boasts numerous services like free internet, free beer at the bar, free this and free that. BUT, because the owners had just arrived back to New Zealand from their annual winter getaway, we were one of the two bunches of guests living there.

As if to make up for the not-yet-up-and-running-facilities, his wife was generous enough to cook a huge pot of soup containing barley seeds, mixed vegetables and a medley of stuff. While I thought the soup was intriguingly tasteful, the rest were more than horrified to see me consume the entire bowl.

The Dining Area with a cannot-make-it piano
Outside the bright and colourful backpackers hostel, things couldn't be more different.

We discovered that the town Greymouth was... grey. Yes, it was that explicit...

Grey River (seriously)
Strangely, things were a little less gloomy at night.Thankfully, our mouths remained a healthy pink at the end of the day.

On another note:
I HATE BLOGGER. Thanks to its archaic buggy website, I have lost quite a few pictures of Greymouth which explains why I posted so little on this dreary town. Anyway, it's time to move on or I will never be able to finish this post.

Next update will be 24 hours later.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

holy fucking crap! well finally there's some real MIDDLE EARTH shit that is a certainly a good break from pictures of dull buildings, pictures of glasses of overpriced cocoa and pictures of neatly arranged food ... I hope you'll ditch the guides soon though, and by guides i really mean "guides", you know those people who earn their coin by looking at beautiful scenery ALL THE TIME, and go "ooh, but we can't stay here long, the glacier's going to melt and we're all going to die. Safety First!" when they really means "well I hope I can make it home to watch the NEW ZEALAND IDOL, and retire early because these clueless visitors throw me their money because they can't figure out how to walk on a trail on their own", no, they don't deserve a cent of my money, if a bus can reach there I have no doubt your minivan can with properly equipped tires of course ... of course it's important to go first with someone who knos the ropes, you don't want to be buried in an avalanche or anything, because that would suck, but just think about it, by going on your own you can frolick in the beautiful beautiful ice till you run out of food, you die or Jesus comes again. Now doesn't that sound more exciting?

2:35 am  
Blogger Kelvin Lim said...

HAHA. What an unexpected outburst from you.

Yup, reaching the foot of the Fox Glacier is certainly no problem, cos there is a proper road leading there.

But I wouldn't say the guides are totally dispensable cos you really can't walk on some parts of the glacier unless you have the proper equipment. And it's not like there's a map for you to navigate around the ice...

Nah. I speculate that the money we threw at didn't really all go to the guides but probably to the enterprising company.

6:57 am  
Blogger Unknown said...

Hey my god! I am Ivan from HK and searched your blog through Technorati tags.......What a coincidence! I am also writing about my trip.....haha

3:16 am  

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