ice….

(Andre’a) So, a couple weeks ago, we had a lot of rain. And by a lot of rain, i mean… A LOT OF RAIN! (Probably more than San Angelo, sees in a few years!!) The storms weren’t that unusually big, it”s just that we had 4 of them right after another. Our hostel grounds ended up getting flooded pretty bad and had some plumbing issues, but other than that we survived.

So along with all the rain, came other catastrophes as well. The Fox Glacier (45 minutes away) had major problems. The road to get out to the glacier was washed away… with some vehicles stranded on the other side… and still are. As I hear right now, it looks like they won”t even be able to reopen it up for another 3 months or so… That’s right in the middle of the peak season too… bummer! But good for the Franz Glacier Guides! They are and will be pretty busy for awhile since they are the only glacier open. As far as the Franz Josef Glacier goes, they had some ice collapse causing the cave in the front to get bigger and tons of ice to float down the gushing river! We were lucky on our day off to run into a fellow Okaritoan (who is a glacier guide) at the Franz Josef coffee shop, Full of Beans. (I love that name!) Anyway, he told us to check out the glacier… it would be well worth a visit and would be so different than the last time we were there. So we did…

This is the “new” glacier. You might be able to compare it to some pictures from a previous post about the Franz Josef glacier. As you can see, it’s still a bit rainy outside.

Here are some big chunks of ice that were laying on the riverbed. Amazing!

You can kinda see the large pieces of ice next to my feet. Although they do blend in with the background a bit… but look how large they are!

Colin trying to be a “macho man”…. I mean, he IS a macho man…..

I like how you can see the rain falling in the background.

Me and my sissy piece of ice! My hands are getting really cold!!

by Andre’a Feldhaus