Ka roimata O Hine Hukatere
There once was a Maori girl named , Hine-Hukatere who greatly loved mountaineering. Her lover, Tawe was not as fond of climbing but Hine often persuaded him to accompany her into the mountains.
On one such expedition Tawe slipped and plunged to his death. Hine was inconsolable and her tears, great in their volume, were frozen by the gods as a memorial to her grief and the loss of her lover Tawe - frozen as the glacier Ka roimata-o-Hine Hukatere - meaning - Tears Of The Avalanche Girl.
Yes, I saw a glacier today!! These days it's called simply Franz Josef, after an Austro-Hungarian emperor.
To me it looked like there was a thunderous mountain river here millions of years ago until someone waved a magic wand and froze it forever.
The sad thing is that it is retreating and the markers clearly show where it was 10, 20, 100 years ago. As someone said - "Glaciers - enjoy them, your children will not know what they are"
In general, our day was a huge disappointment until 2 hours ago - it's been raining, so the helicopters were not flying on glacial tours - THE thing to do here if you want to really see the glaciers. We also decided not to go on a half-day guided walking tour of the glacier, after the Tongariro fiasco - one wet cold miserable hike is enough. So we were driving around aimlessly for most of the day, rethinking our plans (we changed the itinerary pretty drastically) and bitching about the weather. Then finally decided to go drive towards the glacier, hoping that maybe we'll see a little corner of it at least - well, we saw a huge chunk of it!!! I wish someone would have told us earlier that you can still see a good part of it without the helicopters or the guided tour...
On one such expedition Tawe slipped and plunged to his death. Hine was inconsolable and her tears, great in their volume, were frozen by the gods as a memorial to her grief and the loss of her lover Tawe - frozen as the glacier Ka roimata-o-Hine Hukatere - meaning - Tears Of The Avalanche Girl.
Yes, I saw a glacier today!! These days it's called simply Franz Josef, after an Austro-Hungarian emperor.
To me it looked like there was a thunderous mountain river here millions of years ago until someone waved a magic wand and froze it forever.
The sad thing is that it is retreating and the markers clearly show where it was 10, 20, 100 years ago. As someone said - "Glaciers - enjoy them, your children will not know what they are"
In general, our day was a huge disappointment until 2 hours ago - it's been raining, so the helicopters were not flying on glacial tours - THE thing to do here if you want to really see the glaciers. We also decided not to go on a half-day guided walking tour of the glacier, after the Tongariro fiasco - one wet cold miserable hike is enough. So we were driving around aimlessly for most of the day, rethinking our plans (we changed the itinerary pretty drastically) and bitching about the weather. Then finally decided to go drive towards the glacier, hoping that maybe we'll see a little corner of it at least - well, we saw a huge chunk of it!!! I wish someone would have told us earlier that you can still see a good part of it without the helicopters or the guided tour...