Franz Like These

On the move once more, our destination for the night is a place called Barrytown, which does not seem to show up on any of the maps I have of New Zealand. On the way, we stop off at a handful of locations to gawk at fur seals and get generally wet admiring the coastal structures at Pancake Rocks, before we arrive in Barrytown to discover its lack of charms.
Barrytown is a small community near the West Coast, and we have stopped there for the evening because it breaks up the journey from Abel Tasman to the Franz Josef Glacier. There is no other reason to stop there at all; it seems, other than the fact that they serve beer and chips (by the bucket) to the bus loads of travellers who pass through.
We are staying the night in a row of rooms at the back of the pub - the largest, by some margin, of the village's paltry handful of buildings. It's all fairly basic, but the barstaff (all British, by the sounds of things) promise that a local band will be playing that evening.
Gollum is more cautious about the locals.
"They're all feral." he says, "Check their hands: six fingers more often than not, I'll bet you."
He pauses for thought.
"But you don't tell them I said that." He adds.
We spend the evening watching DVDs instead - it seems like a cheaper, if not safer alternative.
One the road again the following day, the sun emerges in time for lunch and we stop off at the unappealingly named Rock Snot Cafe, which Gollum has never been to before.
The woman behind the counter regards our bus emptying into the cafe and barks a warning.
"We don't do fast food." she says, "We do good food, so it takes time."
Gollum blanches, the rest of us order regardless. We sit outside, relishing the oportunity to do so, sitting on benches beside the roaring river, swollen with the past day's rainfall. The food is not so slow, but it is good and the location - the riverbank surrounded by rolling green hillsides - is exactly the sort of scenery you would expect from this country.
Franz Joseph is a small town fuelled almost entirely by the unusual natural phenomenon of the nearby Franz Joseph Glacier, a frozen river rolling straight off the mountainside down to sea-level - in fact the Glacier pretty much stops where the rain forest starts, which is just a little bit on the odd side.
Of course for the sea-level based tourists who have always fancied doing their best Scott of the Antarctic or Edmund Hillary impersonations but have always been a little bit on the squeamish side about the isolation or the altitude or just the sheer cold, that such activities might involve, the glacier and the series of activities which have sprung up around it, represent a rather intriguing prospect.
We opt for the guided walks over the Glacier and make our way to the tour offices to be suited and booted up in head-to-toe branded Gore-Tex. My group is led by a guide called - pleasingly - Cliff, who has red curly hair protruding from beneath his wool beanie, and even redder cheeks burnt rosy from his time on the glacier. He leads us to the foot of the ice and we stop to fit crampon-like gadgets called ice-talons to our boots. Ahead of us, the ice extends upwards, vanishing into the still-low clouds. A great, almost perfectly circular tunnel feeds the river and chunks of ice can be seen dropping from the ceiling into the current. Blocks of ice float past, it's strange to think that they'll have melted before the reach the sea.
The ice itself if already alive with other red-jacketed guides hacking staircases and opening paths. The glacier is advancing - some one-and-a-half metres a week, and so it is a landscape which is continually changing, not to mention one of the only national parks in which the guides cheerfully - not to mention acceptably - carve great hunks out of the landscape without any penalty what-so-ever.
We follow Cliff and his partner Claire as they take us up the ice. The lower paths are well marked, with ropes and chains embedded in the ice to hang onto. The structure of the ice shifts and changes as we progress with fissures and voids opening up around us. Higher still and we are issued with ice-axes, the ice here is new, the glacier reaching up in layers of frozen waves. On many occasions, Cliff and Claire ask us to wait while they hack out new staircases for us to use, the guides who follow renew the same staircases and the whole thing appears to be a rather Sisyphean task, continually carving the same steps which last only momentarily.
Higher still, and the ice takes on the famed blue colouring of compacted ice within ice. There are caves here, and we are lead through one: a circular tunnel leading downwards - once part of a pipeline leading water through the glacier, separated from the others by the shifting of the landscape.
It is a shame that the weather is not a little better - we are lucky not to have much rain, and the conditions are clearing enough for us to be taken higher than the tour has managed for over a week - however looking at the fragile, rich blue structures rising around us, it is not hard to try and picture them against the blue sky they deserve. As it is, the grey stone faces of the mountains surrounding us disappear into the clouds.
As a full day on the ice, the whole experience is intriguing, not to mention surprisingly warm given the environment, but when the time comes to descend once more, it feels like the right time, as though we have had enough by then.
When I get back down, I find that I too have caught the sun: in fact, the woolly hat which has spent the day pulled down across my forehead has left a horizontal burn line, splitting my scalp into white and pink halves like a brick of coconut ice.

As we leave Franz Joseph the following morning, the sun is already starting to emerge from the clouds, and as we pass the glacier, glimpses of snow capped mountains can be seen surrounding it. It looks utterly beautiful, but there is no time to stop.
"Should have stayed another night." I hear someone murmur.
The weather continues to clear as the day progresses and when we stop near a cafe in the morning, the line of the Southern Alps which has accompanied us along our journey finally begins to reveal its jagged row of summits, each draped in glittering white snow. Even Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain seems to be making itself visible and the bus is delayed further as photographs are taken.
Twenty-five kilometres from Franz Joseph is the Fox Glacier, which is a little smaller but no less impressive. Sadly it is not home to a giant, smiling polar bear, nor does it taste of mint. We stop at the nearby Lake Matheson and take photographs anyway.
Indeed as the weather gets better and better, the bus stops more and more to cater to the demands of the photographers on board. The scenery revealing itself to be as ravishing as one might expect of this country. The mountains here are real mountains: big and spiky, covered with forests and topped with snow. But between them are broad, flat planes - river valleys and grasslands. This is real Alpine country (alps, not muesli) and it is extraordinary.
Some on the bus do not seem to share the sense of awe which the spectacle demands, and at every photo stop, opt to stay on the bus, stretched across as many seats as thy could find - not even looking out of the windows.
"We've been travelling for ages." One of them argues, a flailing-limbed teen with thick glasses and an afro. "We've seen all of this stuff before."
He hunches into the pair of seats he has commandeered and bends back the pages of his Len Deigton novel pointedly.
"But you haven't been here before." Gollum counters, and in frustration steals the boy's camera to take some photographs himself.
One such stop-off involves a short walk to the Blue Pools, which as the name suggests is an idyllic spot at which the mountains rise from water which is a deep, beautiful blue colour. There is barely a cloud in the sky when we reach the spot, and the effect is overwhelmingly beautiful. We drift off across the rocky shore and linger there for as long as we can, just happy to be part of the landscape.

We stop for the night in Makarora, a pleasant little resort in the middle of nowhere. The setting is typically impressive: surrounding mountain ranges dropping down to the riverside, and the accommodation is made up of neat little A-frame structures, each huddled with beds. The atmosphere is relaxed and welcoming, although there is the suspicion that were the weather less agreeable, it would be not so different to the set-up at Old Macdonald's Farm. But on this occasion, the weather is in our favour, and so after a brief walk around the local nature trail (the nature of which primarily consisted of Tui birds - throaty mimics who clearly relished our audience) we idle away the afternoon by stretching out on the grass beneath the sun with a bottle of wine.
The evening is spent in the adjoining bar, where a birthday celebration of sorts is being held for one of our fellow passengers, a girl named Claire. The proprietor of the bar - who wears the same severe expression when enthusing about the local attractions as she does when threatening to close down the bar because people are getting too drunk - announces that there will be a prize draw to win a day of white-water river surfing in Queenstown. River surfing is an activity in which you are kitted out in a wetsuit and flippers and then sent head-first down some white-water rapids with little more than a polystyrene float to keep you upright. Very New Zealand, of course.
Gollum is invited to pick the winner.
"Please may it not be me," Claire mutters to herself, "Please may it not be me."
"Claire!" Gollum announces without even looking at the name he has drawn.
Claire looks mortified.