Hiking on Franz Josef Glacier
Franz Josef Glacier: I'd heard of this on the first stop of my RTW trip in Buenos Aires, from a British couple who had just come from New Zealand. So I'd always had this place in the back of my mind, as a future stop on my trip. And I'm so glad I came; it's truly a different experience to walk on a glacier.
Here is the glacier, spilling in between the valley. From where this picture is taken, it's still a 45 minute walk to the base of the glacier, so it looks deceptively small here.
A big surprise for me was how the glacier surface was dimpled. Glaciers in my imagination are smooth masses. But this is a "warm" glacier, so it's constantly melting and freezing and changing shape. And actually some of the glacier guides wore T-shirts or shorts, even though this was wintertime. It did get pretty warm after hiking around.
My favorite part was going through the crevasses. Our guide, Alex, told us that the crevasses are formed when the glacier goes over the mountain, as if you're bending a chocolate bar. And yeah, that's pretty descriptive of what they look like!
Alex worked pretty hard cutting steps in the ice for us. It reminded me of a completely different landscape, the African bush, where my safari rangers cut the branches out of the path of our Land Rover . New Zealand glacier hike and Kruger safari: months and worlds apart!
