The next day we headed to Franz Joseph Glacier to do a half day hike. We loaded our gear and went to our location, where we would hike to a riverbed and follow the icemelt to the glacier. In order to do this, however, we had to hike through rainforest. Interestingly enough, in this dense area of wood, the clearest paths were on creeks. We climbed creeks up the side of hills until we had cleared an icemelt river below, and then walked the extra kilometer across the stones to the Glacier itself.
Glaciers are interesting phenomena of nature- snow builds at the top of a mountain range, and gets packed until it becomes ice- it slides down the side of the mountain, creating crevasses in it as it goes. Think of it as a giant frozen river, hundreds (if not thousands) of feet thick, moving at the astonishing rate of 5 feet a day. This means that every few days, new paths may need to be carved in the glacier to accommodate the new shifting of the ice.
As we ascended above the valley floor on a staircase carved into the ice wall, we began to see how large this behemoth truly was- it stretched on as far as the dense misty air would allow us to see. The rain gave the ice a deep blue sheen, and kept it smooth and reflective- it was really quite breathtaking, not counting the loss of feelings in limbs.
As we reached the pinnacle of our journey up this insultingly large slab of ice, I saw something that I really didn’t expect to: a parrot. To be precise, it wasn’t just any parrot, but a Kea (or Kia), the world’s only alpine parrot. It was a dark brown color, with red wings that were tucked away and invisible as it sat on the ice. It stared us down, and seemed to take a liking to me. As I was in a staring contest with this strange feat of the ornithological world, our guide mentioned that the Kea is a very smart animal. It will find the backpacks of hikers, undo the clips with its beak, grab the lunchbox, open it, and help itself to the tasty morsels inside. My personal theory is that if a bird can open a lunchbox and get to my midday meal, it deserves it. Anyway, as the Kea eventually flew away (displaying those beautiful red feathers) we began our descent. It is here that I got ambushed, even if only verbally.
A Kea. (This one is my photograph)
I have a friend named Andrew from Canada- and I never let him forget it. I poke fun at him all the time for being Canadian, for no good reason. He knows it is a joke, and he goes at me too, but he is normally outnumbered. Well here, on this slab of ice (where else?) he found another Canadian named Monique, and the tables quickly turned. On the way down I was ganged up upon- the jokes came so fast that I couldn’t keep up- and we all quickly began to like this new Canadian. We ended up hanging out with her for the rest of the afternoon. That night we went to the (only) bar in town and played some free pool, and saw whom else but that group of Americans from Castle hill. It really is a small world (in New Zealand). Turns out they know some of the Americans at our University in Hamilton as well.
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