well i leaned something today. never under any cicumstances atempt a vicously dificult maze when you have to get on the bus at a specific time. the horror! we have just been to puzzle world, a theme paky kind of thing for puzzles. quite cool really, loads of wierd stuff encluding a room which was at a 45 degree angle. and of course there was this maze. if you havent experianced the unplesant realisation that you are the only one left in the maze from you bus which incedentaly is just about to leave, and your freinds are watching, loaghing and yelling contradictory directions, and atempting the impossible task of solving a maze wilst sprinting, well you havent lived! well i made it in the nick of time, but only by cheating and using one of the emergency escape hatches.

the day before i risked life and limb clambering on the glacier, i went kyaking. this was most exelent. we set of at about 3.30 and finished at 7ish. there was the option of double or single kyaks. i chose a single as it was quite clearly better. it was quite small and supprisingly menuverable with the aid of the rudder which i controled with foot peddels. there wasn’t much in the way of instruction. the bloke, who incerdentaly was called wayne, basicaly demonstrated how to paddle by flailing his arms a bit, and shoved us out into open water, with the usefull tip “don’t fall in” the lake we did it in was choppy to start with then became very calm and flat. i found it suprisingly easy get into a rythem and nip along at quite a pace. we went across the lake which was massive, then moved into a kind of mangrove swamp or something. the was a thin stream wich we could navigate amidst the reeds and twisted trees. all in all very classy. wayne took a load of digital photos and stuck them on a cd for us. i forgot to bring them into town so i’l mail some later.

the next day we set of bright and early for the glacier, after picking up our boots, raincoat, icepick and talonz(small versions of crampons with teeth very simmiler in style to a brickhammer) the first bit we walked was just rock and scree covering the base of the valley in the distance was the glacier, looking like an inormous mound of flower for some reason. it took us around 30. minutes to reach the base and there we split up into groups of diferent speeds. climbing the foothills of the glacier was quite easy the guides have already cut steps into the ice for you. the plan was that we would head up to an area sutable for lunch then tackle the sinister sounding pinakels(aaarg the pain of spelling) but before this we had to cross a series of nasty looking icebridges. these were basicaly your common or garden ladder stretched across a gaping casm with a plank on it so you didn’t fall through the rungs. the nasty part was that they were quite springy and there was not much of the ladder in contact with the ice, so there was a chance of them bouncing off. also you were suposed to walk with your feet well apart so that your talonz didn’t catch on your foot straps, this is tricky when you are walking a plank. at one point i my hair obscured my vision, and i stumbled giving me a heart stopping momant of terror befor i regained control. when we got to the lunching spot we decided to carry on to the pinakles and have lunch afterwards. at this point the steps were disapearing and the guide had to hack out new ones when we got to a perticulaly nasty section. the pinakle were like very sharp fold in the ice and we had to clamber along the bottom of the folds through thigh deep pools of freezing water or along the side of unplesantly deep sinkholes. the guide of course pranced obout like a mountan goat, leaping crevases and hacking steps left right and center. he was called hamish and was slightly crazy. at one point we came to this fantabulous icecave which burrowed deep into the glacier. the inside was a crisp blue and quite bright. the passege we travesed was very norrow at points smaller than the width of myshoulders and carved into amazing shapes. slightly scary but very cool. after the cave we hadto wait frozen to the marrow with our boots full of water as the guides tryied to work out were we could possably go. they chose to head for another cave accesed by walking along the side of a fold with nothing below us but a large hole. very tricky and non a little scary. after that we had lunch and went back down. and had a bit of a rest.

got to go. i’ll mabe ring tonight.