Zelma’s Trip

On Thursday I woke up and wandered into the town. When I say town here, there was really only one road in Franz Josef with shops but it was enough. I sat and had lunch and drank lots of coke with ice whilst admiring the most amazing views up to the mountains. Franz Josef is a popular destination for tourists as it is one of the easiest places from which to access the glacier but the town was stunning in its own right. I spent a lot of time deciding how I wanted to see the glacier and whether I could afford to do a heli-hike. A heli-hike, without wanting to patronise anyone, is how it sounds, i.e. a helicopter ride where you are dropped at the top of the glacier, a two hour hike and then a helicopter ride back down. By the time I returned to the hostel in the afternoon I had decided that I couldn’t really afford the heli-hike but that I wanted to do it enough so booked it anyway.

In the evening I sat and watched television in the hostel and got talking to a guy called Lance, a German guy and an English girl. I had decided to go on a "glow worm walk" which was just up the road from the hostel and the aforementioned joined me along with another Asian girl. The German guy turned out to be a hoot and was going on about how it was always the quiet ones who murdered one of the group and the like. The walk was good, although we arguably didn’t have enough torches between us and there were a couple of slips. There were several points with groups of glow worms along the way but the piece de resistance was at the end of the walk where there were so many glow worms that the place just lit up.

When we got back to the hostel we watched a rather dull film and chatted. After the obligatory, "Where are you from, where did you come from and where are you going?" questions it transpired that I was headed in the same direction as Lance who was driving and kindly offered to give me a lift the following day.

Back in my dorm I met a couple of English guys who were both friendly and interesting and one of them, Andy, managed to make me giggle for ages. It’s always nice to meet people from England who are normal and share a sense of humour. They had also just done a day’s hike on the glacier and absolutely raved about it which pleased and excited me prior to my trip which was planned for the following day.