Wednesday 4th February
We awoke, feeling fully refreshed after a lovely, uninterrupted 4 minutes of sleep. When the larking about in the corridor finally ceased, the youth who were sleeping in the tent outside our window took over, and strange teenage noises punctuated the rest of our night.
We made eggs for breakfast and sat grandly with our en-suite room perk, a coffee peculator.
Today we were walking to Franz Josef Glacier. We watched the rain falling steadily throughout the morning, with a view to heading out at 11am as the local weather forecast had assured us it would have stopped raining by then!
Donned our Mac-in-a-sack and Rach’s new charity shop shoe and sock special and hit the road. We arrived in the car park and torrential rain was still pelting down. On a positive note, the car park was empty! We began our trek, feeling totally impressed with ourselves for not being put off by the weather. We marvelled at the surrounding mountains, which we learnt were made when the earths crusts overlap, and the glaciers are made of crushed snow, and are very old! We walked up a gravelly track for about an hour enjoying the beautiful surroundings of ice blue coloured pools, and impressive waterfalls. Then we got as far as we were allowed to go; the glaciers are quite unstable and every now and again they break off and squash tourists who step over the safety barriers. From about 250 meters away we could see ice and snow stretching out as far as the eye could see, and amazing ice caves which had been formed naturally. Stayed for a while until we got chilly, and began our walk back to the carpark, it had stopped raining by now! Phil enjoyed taking photos of rocks and Rach enjoyed trying to stay upright; the bargain walking boots had failed, the bottom of the shoe had come away from the main shoe, on both feet. Embarrassing.
Got back to the car and did emergency shoe repairs with some hairbands. Drove back in the general direction of Franz Josef village but got distracted by a sign which was directing the way to Lake Wombat. With a name like that, and a mere return of just 1.5hrs, we couldn’t resist. Parked the car and headed up the steep incline which would take us to the lake. It was a very pretty, shaded woodland walk, made especially nice now that the sun had come out. Birds were tweeting and because everyone else was now at the glacier, we had the whole walk to ourselves. We couldn’t believe no one else was on the walk as we arrived at our destination; it was the most beautiful lake ever! Surrounded by trees, clear, twinkling in the sunshine! Like something out of a Disney movie! Threw in some bread to try and attract an eel or two and sat back to enjoy our lunch. We lay in the sunshine and played about on the fallen trees which meant we could walk out quite far into the lake. We were hugely enjoying the seclusion when we heard footsteps. A lone, hairy, Israeli young man with a towel introduced himself, and we had a little chat about travelling and the weather. All good so far. Then he mentioned he came here to have a swim, and had we been in? Despite it being sunny the lake was a glacial lake, and at least minus 1000 degrees. ‘No,’ we said. ‘I thought I might try it’ he said. We laughed and said ‘go for it!’ Then came the unexpected. ‘Actually, I thought I might go in naked’ he announced. ‘Do you mind?’ We were torn. Yes, we were now cool travellers, living the dream, anything goes man! But….we were also British. Rach averted her eyes and hoped the bread now hadn’t attracted eels in case they were more tempted by this new snack, Phil squeaked ‘no that’s fine go for it’ and tried to look totally cool with the whole situation as the chaps underwear was removed and placed much to close to the remains of our lunch. Soon he was in the water, splashing about quite happily, still nattering away to us!
Phil was now totally beside himself with embarrassment and absolutely did not know where to look, so Rach took pity, had a final chat with our nudey friend and we got on our way. He seemed quite disappointed we were going! Walked back to the car in a stunned silence. Had some chocolate werthers originals to revive ourselves.
Back at base and it was dinner time. Had some sausages and spicy rice, which we smuggled into the safety of our room, away from all the lively free spirited youth. (Apart from the one who was still asleep under our window.)
