Today we started with a cool activity. We went across the street from our hostel to a small workshop to do some bone carving. Bone carvings are very popular, especially the ones with Maori designs. Maori people have been carving bones for jewerly for a long, long time.
We started by deciding which design we would like to carve. I choose a fish hook design which represents strength and determination and brings peace, prosperity and good health. It is also a mark of authority and leadership. According to Maori mythology the fish hook of Maui made form whalebone was used to haul up the North Island (it's a cool story about how New Zealand came to be). Andrea decided to do a combination of a whale tail and a koru. We can't remember what the whale tail signifies, but the koru represents growth and life; new beginnings, growth and harmony. It symbolizes a new fern shoot.
We took the designs and traced them on a piece of bone.
Then our instructors helped us out by cutting out the inner parts of the designs.
Next we got to play with the tools and started grinding away the bone around the outer part of the design. We used several different tools like belt sanders and orbital sanders and dremel tools to remove the excess bones and smooth the edges.
Once the tool work was done we grabbed a piece sandpaper and sanded and sanded and sanded.
After four different grits of sandpaper our bone carving was ready for a quick polish and cord. As you can see we are excellent bone carvers. I may just change my profession (just kidding Dad, I will stick with health and safety for a least another year or two).
After the bone carving we hoped back on the bus to start our journey to Franz Jospeh Glacier. Most of the rest of the day was spent driving, but we did make a couple of stops at different places, including a look at this cool mountain lake. Cool "Heart" Bananas is sitting on John's shoulder. Our wonderful nieces and nephews helped us decide on a name. Thanks Conor, Caitlin, Kiera, Annika and Tanner!
Then we had a look around the Bushman Center. The Bushman Center had a bunch of information about getting rid of the wild deer in New Zealand. New Zealand did not have any native mammals other than one small bat. The non native deer were being pests, so they were killed and the venison shipped to Germany or moved to farms. There was one deer with a rack that Andrea thought would look good on the wall at One Shot Buck Camp. She thought since John Sr. is the patriarch of One Shot he should make it his obligation to shoot a buck like this...
We arrived in Franz Joseph, set up our activities for the next day, got our room sorted and had some dinner before we crashed in our bed.
Day 35
It was an early start with fairly decent weather (slightly overcast), we hoped the weather would hold, but we had doubts since everyone kept telling us there were heavy rain warnings out for the area. We didn't care, we had a glacier to hike!
Yup, that is right, we spent today hiking on the Franz Joseph Glacier. We were on a guided full-day hike, and it was amazing. We arrived at the headquarters about 35 minutes early, clearly we were excited about the adventure of the day. We had a cuppa (cup of coffee, a flat white to be specific) and relaxed before the rest of the hikers arrived. Then we were outfitted with an outer/goretex layer for the top and bottom, wool hat and mittens, boots and crampons. Then it was off to the glacier...
The weather was less than ideal as it was raining most of the day, but I suppose we would have gotten wet anyway. The guides carry an ice ax with them that they use to carve out steps as we are going along since the glacier is constantly changing.
We walked through crevasses such as the one above. Some were very narrow and we barely fit through them. We would have to shuffle one foot in front of the other and turn our bodies sideways in order to get through. It was a lot of fun and incredible to explore.
Unfortunately, due to the rain we didn't get to take as many pictures as we would have liked (especially Andrea) because we don't have a waterproof camera. The ones we did get were pretty good, but the camera lens kept fogging up, hence the blurry areas on the pictures. We had a few breaks in the rain and tried to take as many pictures as possible.
It was amazing to be walking on the ice and we both enjoyed the crampons. It takes a bit of time before you get to the point of really trusting that they will hold you. It was a bit more slick due to the rain, so we had to walk almost like we were marching and stomping our feet.
We had to keep moving to stay warm, so John was showing off his dance moves all day. Ok, maybe not, but it did get pretty cold if you stopped moving around.
We had fun exploring some of the different formations in the ice. It was an amazing experience and we were tuckered at the end of the day. We got back to our hostel and dried off and warmed up a bit before heading to the cafe to have some dinner and relax by the fire.
No comments:
Post a Comment