Climbing the Glay-See-Er was SWEET AS!

Ka Roimata o Hinehukatere (The tears of Hinehukatere) is the Maori name for Franz Josef Glacier located on the West Coast of the South Island. It is said in Maori legends that Hinehukatere had a passion for climbing the mountains in the Southern Alps, but one day her lover, Wawe was swept away by an avalanche. The Franz Josef Glacier was then formed from Hinehukatere's tears as they flowed down the mountain and froze.

As we rounded the corner out of the woods and into carved out valley made up of rocks and streams, our eyes landed upon the magnificent glacier whose glistening white crystals poured down from the mountains meeting with mixtures of mud and rock. Approaching the white field, we suited up into the jackets and pants provided to us and attached the spiky crampons to our giant boots. With the crunch of loose ice and slush beneath our feet, we made our way over the glacier, slipping through crevices and tunnels of slick ice that illuminated all around us with a blue glow. I was in what seemed to be the Ice Age, although it must have been the end of the Ice Age as there was a constant dripping and the ice seemed to be melting slowly. In fact, when we set up for climbing up the steep masses of ice, the bolts that anchored the ropes to the top had to be changed every once in a while so that the melting ice wouldn't make them to come loose and cause someone to fall.

Tied into the rope, with ice axes in my hands, I was ready to try this new type of climbing. I thought about the movie, Vertical Limit and the insanely ridiculous scene where the main character jumps from one cliff to another and miraculously sticks it with his climbing axes.

Digging my spiky toes and sharp axes into the ice wall one at a time, I imagined how fun it would be to reenact this scene right now. I also realized how similar this was to normal rock climbing by the way you have to carefully keep track of your balance as well as scope out nice jugs or lips in the rock (ice) where your fingers (axe) and feet can get a good grip. However, having a rainstorm of ice shower down in your face with every whip of the axe definitely made it a new, unique experience.

Back in the town of Franz Josef, I kept overhearing a lot of the locals or glacier guides speaking about the "glay-see-er." While noticing the difference in pronunciation, it wasn't until I heard the word again from our Kiwi friend who was traveling with us that I really paid attention to how funny it sounded when he pronounced it. Teasingly, the rest of us all began to poke fun at the word "glay-see-er" and have now found it necessary to pronounce it that way in attempt to blend in with the Kiwi's. Throughout my time in New Zealand, I have realized that there aren't really any major adjustments in the way people speak here. There are some words with special pronunciation like "glay-see-er," such as"earplane" (airplane) or "brudge" (bridge) which are typically easy to understand, but on occasions result in a "what did you say?" And who knew that tomato sauce is ketchup, chips are fries, crisps are chips, lifts are elevators, and jandels are flip-flops. There are also some fun expressions that I've taken a liking to, one of the most popular being "sweet as" which is the same as saying something is "awesome." You can even customize this expression by trading "sweet" in for another word such as "nasty" or "hot." In general, I catch myself giggling from time to time over new expressions I hear from my Kiwi friends, but I enjoy picking up on their lingo and using it every now and then.