Legs, Glaciers, Beaches, Etc.

I am currently writing this post from a old broken down school bus painted red and turned into an internet cafe. Its currently raining outside but set to clear overnight. Overall the New Zealander's are a tougher bunch then us Americans. They will wear shorts regardless of the weather conditions. If its sunny and warm or cold and raining. Its not uncommon to see a road crew (equivalent to our Caltrans) working in the rain with neon safety vests, work boots with long woolen socks and "short pants" Often they are very "short pants" coming high upon the thigh. I've even seen denim shorts with the bottoms rolled kinda like NKOTB would have worn. Mix that with a nice Canadian looking mullet and you have one hunk of a New Zealand man. Friendly folks despite their fashion handicap.

Anyway, for the last few days we have been making our way from North to South along the western side of the South island. We have mainly been sticking to the coast. It is beautiful, very steep shoreline like Big Sur, with a climate like Hawaii mixed with California. We stopped one day and took a hike down to the northern most breeding ground of the fir seal. Beautiful animals, and so cute with their little pups. It's mating season so the large males battle it out for the hottest most blubbery females. They made quite a racket with all their screaming and thrashing around. Everyone knew who the real boss of the area was, He was a gigantic slow moving beast of a seal. He pretty much ruled the beach. We named him big poppa and judging from the scars and marks on his body he had been swimming the seas between New Zealand and the south pole for quite a few years. Very neat to see.

Today we stopped on our journey at a cave area that was little mentioned in the guide book and took short hike out to the mouth of a cave with nobody around. We brought our headlamps and started walking into the caverns. It was instantly dark and our little REI headlamps didnt even produce enough light to see 6" in front of you. It was that dark. So we ended up on our hands and knees shining the light on the ground directly in front of us. We passed through large caverns that progressively got smaller and smaller, and then through a section we had to squeeze ourselves through. The entire time we were both very nervous and our hearts were definately beating faster then normal. After a while we reached a part where we could go no deeper, we turned our headlamps off looking for the New Zealand glow worm. Its this little worm that lives deep withing caves and glows in the dark. After all our climbing we saw a faint glow. Only one glow worm. Oh well we saw it none the less. Strange the way it glows in the dark. We took a few pics and beat a hasty retreat out of the caves. So eerie being deep within the dark earth all alone. All I thought of was the recent earthquake here and how we would be crushed instantly.

And now we are in Franz Joseph Glacier. Its a small town at the bottom of the Southern New Zealand alps. A large river runs through the town with the telltale bright blue color of glacier melt. At the head of the river, just outside town is the bottom of Franz Joseph Glacier. Tomorrow a bus picks us up at 10:30 AM for a 6 hour ice climb up the glacier. I hope we are in shape for it. More later.