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Rachel's Travels...
Had an early start today - 8am! as I went on a glacier walk. It was a full day hike and started at 9.15am. I went with a girl in my room called Mitsu. I got kitted out in all the gear - walking boots, crampons and water proof clothing as it was supposed to rain later in the day. We were driven to the glacier in old fashion buses. There were eleven walkers in my group with two guides, Rob and Martin. It took about 15 minutes to walk from the car park to where you could see the glacier. It was massive and the sheer scale was only noticable when you could see people walking on it who looked like little dots, then you realised just how big it was. Rob gave us a brief talk on glaciers then we set off. To get there we had to first go through bush and rainforest - the route we were taken didn't have a path so we practically had to hack our way through. The route we were taking would take us above the glacier so we could get a good look at it, then we would climb down onto it.
It was a really steep climb up - at one point we had to climb up a ladder. There was also a sheer drop at points, so we had to hold onto a chain that was bolted to the side of the cliff. Got onto to the glacier and put my crampons on. It was cool to walk on ice!
Walked for about 20 minutes then stopped for lunch (we went over to some rocks to sit down). As soon as I had finnished lunch it started to rain - and it didn't stop all day and all night!
It was great walking on a glacier - the guides had to cut us ice steps. We went over crevices and there were holes that were cut by water that were so deep they went right to the bottom of the glacier. Not a good place to fall down. I was pleased that I didn't fall over once (unlike this guy who slipped down a slope and went flying) - I slipped a couple of times though. It was great fun, with the exception that it was really raining quite heavily.
At about 4pm we started making our way off the glacier. Once we were off the glacier we walked back a different route - following the river down the valley to the carpark. I was glad to be going back by this point as I was starting to get tired, my boots leaked and the rain was now really bugging me. But it was a good day - I would definately recommend a glacier walk to everyone!
However when I got back to my hostel and emptied out my bag I found out that everything was soaked including my purse and money, my passport, tickets and my phone which had water in the diplay. I wasn't pleased and spend the rest of the evening trying to dry everything out. This wasn't easy because it was really quite a damp atmosphere.
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