travels of a wandering canadian

photos of south island part 2

the next stop on the trip was barrytown. the only things of interest according to the lonely planet is a bar/pub/hotel and a cafe. luckily there is more to do there than just eat and drink. you can make your very own knife and also enjoy a giant swing with the sea as the view in front of you and the rainforest right behind you. the poles for the swing are former telephone poles.





this is the middle of the entire process. you start you with a piece of rusty metal, some old wood (that comes from the old women's psych ward from hte neibouring town, the trees were 2000 yrs old when they were cut down to make planks for the building).




the end result
















the next interesting stop was at franz joseph glacier and a nice glacier walk there. you get outfitted with boots, socks, jacket, rain pants, mitts, tuque and crampons so you don't fall down some crevasse in the ice and are found 15 days latter when the glacier has moved and metled enough to give up your body. that was a really cool experience because you end up walking on ice that is several hundred meters thick surrounded by rain forest (we had to leave the glacier early because they were predicting 330 mm of rain!!! not snow but rain on the glacier, meaning 3 meters of snow were going to fall further up).



you can see the ppl at the bottom of the crevasse and how insignificant they are compared to the walls of ice (they are the tiny spots at the bottom of the V)
this is the view looking into the valley from the glacier

posted by madeleine @ 7:41 PM