The Seagull has landed...

La Sebastiana and beyond

Yesterday V was feeling a bit under the weather so I took a stroll alone west of Plaza Sotomayor and took a couple of rides on the abundant ascensors, or cable cars, that take you up from El PLan to the many hills around the bay. It just so happens that the closest one to us is the Ascensor Concepcion, the oldest (1886) in Valparaiso. V doesn't like them, they're basically a wooden shack that's pulled up rails on steel cables, but I love them and they're cheap as chips.

Walking back up through the Cerros (hills) I had to admit that Valparaiso is probably the most photogenic city I've ever visited, the views here are truly astonishing. The only fly in the ointment is the dog shit. It is absolutely everywhere. Valparaiso has thousands of dogs running loose and they are shitting at an alarming rate. How V and I missed stepping in it for 4 days I'll never know, and the smell is pretty much everywhere too. You see dogs passed out on every corner, but they're pretty timid and didn't scare us too much.

Today we both headed around the tops of the Cerros, following the Avenue Alemania, which eventually leads you to La Sebastiana  - Pablo Neruda's Valparaiso home. Seeing the city from the streets up here is the best way - this place is nuts. Every inch of the suburban hills are covered in a hodge-podge of architecture and design. There's modern mansions, mock tudor apartments, cubist cells and slum shacks - all stuck on the hillsides like huge childrens' play blocks. It's a riot of colour and shapes. The buildings cascade down onto the sensibly designed Plan, it's a total stampede of living space. Valparaiso is built on a earthquake zone, but some of these houses look as if a strong gust of wind would blow them down off their wobbly stilts and into the sea. It's fantastic, a tumbling riot of brick, tin and wood. And it comes in all colours - red, blue, pink, green and hundreds of shades of each on top of that. Many walls have murals on them - from the beautiful to the bizarre and sometimes threatening (clowns with bloody fangs is a big theme - why? I don't know).

After that walk La Sebastiana had a lot to live up to. Unfortunately it didn't. Unlike La Chascona in Santiago, Neruda's Valparaiso home is staid, commercialised, and over-visited. Chascona looks like Neruda walked out of it 10 minutes ago, Sebastiana is bare and dull, as I said, not much to see here that you can't see in Santiago. When we got there the 4 stories of the house were swarming with about 100 Chilean schoolkids, you can guess the chaos that lot caused. There's one thing in which this house does trump the other though - the views, you can't beat them.

After La Sebastiana we headed downhill again and booked our bus tickets to La Serena tomorrow (7 hour bus journey - ouch), and went to a restaurant. Oh, and we bumped into another demonstration being escorted by cops up the road - the old Chileans do like their protests, this one was also about education (as the Santiago protest last week was).

Tonight we'll pack up and take it easy, but I'll miss Valparaiso, it's been one of the best  places of the whole trip. The people, food, drink, art, architecture and general buzz are totally unique. Highly, highly recommended.

The hills are alive

Yesterday was our 1st wedding anniversary. V and I decided to push the boat when we got here to Valparaiso and booked a more upmarket hotel on top of Cerro Alegre for our 4 day stay. The views over the bay and port are great, but the foggy days that persist here don´t make for great photographs.

First night we found a great little Bohemian cafe around the corner from us on Av Amiralte Montt. The young, hip staff were good company, the food was excellent and I even bought a small montage painting by a local artist for 30 quid. Lots of the cafes and shops around Cerro Alegre double up as art galleries and are really worth checking out for the food, music and great atmosphere.

Yesterday V and I went exploring El Plan - the flat piece of real estate that separates the surrounding hills from Valparaiso port and the bay. We took in the facades around Plaza Sotomayer before walking to the far east of El Plan to check out the Sunday antique market at Plaza O'Higgins. I found a stall among the brass bric-a-brac and old books which was selling little original paintings and printmaking. I took a fancy to a couple of figurative pieces and the ancient old boy who owned the stall told me they were original works by the Chilean painter Mario Murua, who was born in Valparaiso but now lives and works in Paris.

The old boy had no English, didn´t understand my Spanish (when I told him I was from "Irlanda del Norte" he said "Ahhh, Nort Africa"???) so we wrote down our prices and eventually I bought a 30cm by 10cm gouache off him for 15 quid; I will have to find a bigger flat when we get home to hang our new artworks and knick-knacks!

After the market we both felt like a drink so we dove into the nearest dark little bar off the square just in time to join a throng of noisy local men settling in for an afternoon of TV football and beer. The match was between local club Santiago Wanderers (I know, doesn´t make sense, but they are a Valparaiso club) and Cobresal. SW took an early lead and the bar erupted in shouting and table banging, but not long after SW lost a goal then had a player sent off. The game died a bit after that and ended up with the Wanderers getting spanked 3-1. The drinkers weren´t too troubled and all the men took a fancy to the wife with her blonde hair, she in turn was laughing at the TV commentator's shouts of "Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllle!!!!!" whenever Cobresal hit the back of the net again and again. I was accustomed to this commentary trait watching other South American football on TV in the past, saying that it never ceases to be funny to me also. When we left to get food the locals were slapping our backs and bidding us a good day, Chileans are warm drinking company and I´m getting to like the country more and more everyday.

V and I then found a seafood restaurant where I drank my first Pisco Sour (not great - sickly sweet, but very strong) and ate the strangest meal I've ever encountered. After entradas, or starters, I ordered a marisco stew dish (my menu reader told me marisco was seafood). Our host placed before us a large black saucepan with steaming leaves of cabbage covering a mouth-watering array of sea smells. When we took off the cabbage, the bowl was full of still-shelled mussels and cockles, but the real surprise was when I delved deeper into our dish I found (wait for it) one large potato with skin still on, two pork chops and a chorizo sausage! It shouldn´t have worked but it did, it was delicious.

Today we´re just chilling out, we had planned on visiting La Sebastiana, Pablo Neruda´s house in Valparaiso, but it's closed on Mondays. Hopefully the sunshine will burn off the fog properly tomorrow to allow me to take decent photos of Valparaiso´s hills, which are the greatest attraction of this wonderfully idiosyncratic seaside city.

Pablo and the virgin

This morning was very cold and foggy, we awoke with no hot water in the hotel room. After a freezing night with no central heating (Santiago has a dearth of this basic amenity apparently) it wasn´t very nice. The hotel staff let us use another room to shower.

After that inauspicious start our day turned out to be fantastic. First off we went to the leafy suburb of Bellavista to visit La Chascona, the Santiago home of the world famous Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda.

Neruda is arguably Chile´s most famous historical figure (although General Pinochet and the tragi-comic figure of Salvador Allende run him close.) If you click on Neruda´s name above you can read wikipedia´s full article on him, but in a nutshell: Neruda wrote left-leaning poetry about nature and social struggle, he is almost the patron saint of Chile, especially among the downtrodden masses.

Poetry is a national (and invariably left-wing) pastime in Chile. Whatever your political hue (I stopped voting aged 18, so you can guess mine) any visit here would be less complete without at least a rudimentary exploration of this very Chilean phenonemon. Interestingly, Neruda was a former pupil of Gabriela Mistral, another Nobel literature prize winner, whose strong and attractive face adorns the 5000 peso banknote in Chile.

But enough of the hype. The actual visit to Neruda´s house was a revelation. As well as being a great poet and diplomat, Neruda called himself a "thingist", he collected all sorts of bric-a-brac in his lifetime, from ships´figureheads to pebbles and odd folksy art and seashells. When I mean collected I should stress he hoarded thousands of things: his collection of the ships´figureheads was the largest private collection of these in the world. His house is an amazing warren of little rooms designed on a nautical theme, and there are little bars stuck in every nook. His love of wine, women and song, and his liberal building of bars for partying and entertaining shows old Pablo had his prorities well sorted. We also saw paintings by Picasso, Siquieros, and Diego Rivera. Neruda´s Nobel medal and hundreds of other writings and gifts are available for a closer look too, it´s quite an illuminating experience.

Our guide - Gonzalo - was funny, informative and excellent, as well as a shortarse Johnny Depp look-alike. His easy manner and genuine interest in his subject was a marked change from the tired guide who traipsed with us through the Palacio Cousinos yesterday. Really, I can´t stress this enough, if you ever visit Santiago you must find time to visit this little gem of historical fact stuck beneath the foggy hill of San Cristobal.

After La Chascona, we ate a delicious lunch of fish, wine and potatoes and headed up the Cerro San Cristobal itself, on the Funicular tram. It was now 2pm, and though the sun was trying it´s damnedest to poke through the smog, it was still quite bitter out. I took these pics below of V, who was even more terrified of the rickedety old tram than the chairlift in Queenstown, New Zealand. We got up and down without any great risk to our lives, much to her relief.

On top of San Cristobal is a large statue of the virgin 300m up from street level. But, the fog was too much to see Santiago below, let alone take in the legendary views of the Andes from this vantage point. I took a few pics of the statue before a swarm of Schoolkids ambushed me and demanded I take their photos.

V and I returned to Barrio Paris/Londres and to or hotel very tired but happy we had had a great day. We´re packing up to get the bus to Valparaiso tomorrow. The coastal city has another Neruda home (he had a lot of houses for a devoted communist, but don´t they all?) and when we go we´ll probably look that up too.

Across the Pacific

Santiago de Chile. We flew from Auckland at 6pm on 23rd May, and arrived in Santiago five hours earlier at 1pm. Crossing the international dateline is weird, kind of like time travel. The flight was hard on the system and V and I are still a bit rough from it.

On arrival in Chile we took a taxi from the airport on a fine, clear day. As we drove closer to Santiago´s urban sprawl the smog was horrendous. I expected to see the majestic snow peaks of the Cordillero de Los Andes, those which were visible above the brown haze seemed ghostly and sick. Our taxi driver pointed the pollution out to us, almost apologetically. I answered him as best as I could with my rusty pidgin Spanish. The reason for Santiago´s smog is caused by these same mountains - the city sits in a bowl surrounded by them, and in winter the dry, sultry air sits over the urban area like a halo, unable to waft away. It´s worse than anything I saw in China.

I had intended avoiding talking politics with any Chileans while visiting their country - with it´s chequered and contentious past I thought it wise to play the dumb gringo, and I was going to make General Augusto Pinochet an especially taboo subject of conversation. But, 15 minutes after taking the cab I was in my first discussion about the old despot. As we were travelling through an official-looking downtown plaza (I hadn´t got my bearings yet being just off the plane) the cabbie jabbed his thumb at the imposing facades and said simply "Pinochet". I asked him, "Pinochet problemo?", he clucked and said nonchalantly, "Pinochet mucho problemo". And that was that.

We´re staying in Barrios Paris/Londres, a cobblestoned old sector of town just south of the Centro and the famous Alameda or Av Libertador Gral Bernardo O´Higgins. With jet-lag tugging at our heels we decided to go for a walk around the centre of town and buy some provisions. How cheap this place is! I bought us a two-course meal each for about 4 quid, then took home a bottle of red plonk for under 2 quid, I´m going to like spending that kind of money.

Today (24th) V and I decided to do the culture bit and see some of the sights. We started with an early morning walk to see the Iglesias Los Sacramentinos, Chile´s answer to the Sacre Cour in Paris. Already the smog could be seen at the end of each street as we next headed west to the Palacio Cousino, a staggeringly extravagant 19th French-style palace built by the Cousino clan from mining fortunes made in the 19th Century, an English speaking guide was thrown in for 4 quid - lubbly jubbly.

Santiago´s Centro revolves around the Plaza de Armas, we headed there before noon to get a bite to eat. On the way back up the Alameda we stopped to watch a huge crowd of school students protesting outside the Education Ministry. Around the corner on the Plaza de la Libertad heavily armed paramilitary cops with water cannon and armour were trying to look discreet among the late morning shoppers. I was tempted to photograph them, but the menacing stares soon made me think otherwise. This aspect of South American life rings true in Santiago - radical politics and civil unrest sit uneasy and visible with military might not far away in more secluded attendance, just ready to crack a few heads open. It´s famous for it here, isn´t it?

After lunch we checked out the National History Museum, but with no English signage it became pointless. Then the highlight of the day happened. V and I took a hike up the Cerro Santa Lucia, a small knoll of a hill surrounded by high-rise and smog, but with awesome views across 360 degrees of Santiago. From up here the pollution was even more apparent, and as I type this close to our hotel, my throat still feels dry and scratchy. Ah well, we´re here for another two nights then we´ll be heading to Valparaiso on the coast where hopefully the pacific air will waft away the discomfort of our choked innards.

Leaving New Zealand with the newly blonde

Our final full day in New Zealand. V went ahead and re-dyed her her. Here she is looking like an extra from Doctor Who. You people back home won't see the results until I post photos from Chile, but I think it looks better blonde again, V isn't so sure.

It seems like yesterday that we set off from Sydney to fly to Auckland. NZ has been great, I loved the landscape but V wasn't so keen on the place as she was on Australia. For me the highlights have been: Picton, Franz Jozef, Nelson and Milford Sound. But Auckland has been a fine place to base ourselves for a few days too. Most cities can only dream of being so safe and clean, yet lively and boisterous.

I found Kiwis pretty relaxed people, although a bit cooky in that ex-colonial out-of-the-way way. Many things reminded me of the UK, sometimes the resemblance was uncomfortably like home (the weather in Dunedin!); but at other times the NZ atmosphere is unlike anywhere else, it really is a beautiful little country.

So, we now embark tomorrow on the last leg of the big trip. I'm beginning to feel a bit sad it's ending soon - everywhere we've been (even sterile old Singapore) is worth visiting just for the experience of being away from home and learning about things first-hand. But I too agree with my wife's opinion - Australia has been the pick of the bunch. I suppose the amount of time we spent there allowed us to see the many faces of that big, dry country. It certainly captured my imagination, the scale of it and the sheer indifference of the land to human presence. Not once driving through the outback did I lose that respect for the place - it's true, you set out alone from the highways there and you'll be in big trouble. I love that sense of danger and the un-tamed, it's what drives me to visit such places as Tibet, Nepal, and of course Iraq.

But I think South America won't disappoint in that respect too - we're going over the Andes through the Atacama Desert! I can hardly wait. As for V, who's not maybe as rugged as I am - there should be plenty for her to do in the seaside resorts of Valparaiso and La Serena, and of course the shopping and culture of both Santiago and Buenos Aires themselves. So, we've still a lot to look forward to. I hope I can give a good account of these places in words and pictures over the next few weeks. Cheers.

Nelson - New Plymouth - Auckland

V and I are back in Auckland. We spent our time in Nelson checking out the town and surrounding area. The most interesting thing was finding the shop where the ring for Lord of the Rings was made. The small nondescript jewellers is a big attraction for many visitors, but basically you could swing a cat in the cramped little showroom; and you can pick up a regular copy of the one true ring for up to NZ$2500 or so, if you wanted to be a proper anorak that is.

Leaving Nelson on the 16th May, we drove along the famous Queen Charlotte Driveway, a 33km stretch of tarmac winding (and I mean winding) along the sides of this beautiful steep-sided stretch of the Marlborough Sounds. It has to be the bendiest road I've ever driven on. V and I agreed that the Picton and the Nelson area was the most scenic part of all of New Zealand we'd visited.

We took the ferry back to Wellington at 2pm, the weather was cold but clear, and the sunset behind Wellington itself as we docked again was pretty memorable. I had intended on driving straight to New Plymouth and Mt Egmont/Taranaki, but the dark gloomy evening and my tiredness meant we spent a night in Wanganui instead.

Next morning I was ready to have a good explore and take plenty of pictures of the majestic dome of Taranaki, but, although the day was clear and sunny on the coast where we were, Taranaki was shrouded in dense cloud. I wasn't too phased, and after booking into a lodge in Plymouth, we took a drive up to the north side of the mountain.

When we arrived swirling clouds and drizzle obscured even a glimpse of the mountain so we retreated for an early night and intended to try again in the morning. Alas, the morning of the 17th had an even bigger cloud bank on Taranaki, so disappointed we decided to head on north to Auckland.

And here we are. We've met up with Essex Jim et al in Ponsonby again, and on Saturday night/Sunday morning a few of us headed downtown to get trolleyed watching the FA Cup Final, which kicked off at the ungodly hour of 2am. The pubs in Auckland were full of expat Brits pissing it up and waiting for the game to start. We found a good pub where they had screens on all the cubicles and settled down to noisy night and a so-so game of football that Chelsea FC eventually won in extra time.

This afternoon V has decided she wants to go blonde again, so I'm arsing about town and hoping the Chinese hairdressers won't wreck her hair.

We fly to Chile on the 23rd, where the final leg of our around the world trip starts.

Bimbos and dolphins

A strange title to this post, but it will become clearer later. Leaving Queenstown in the obligatory rain, we headed first south and then due west to Milford Sound.

Approaching the sound is one of the most exhilarating drives I've ever undertaken. The climax was the Homer Tunnel, which sinks down through the mountain and comes out with views down into the sound itself. We sat on the east side, waiting up to 15 minutes for the green light to come on, gaping into the void with water dripping from the roof - it was eerie stuff. When finally we got the green light we descended into what looked like someone's nightmare. If ever there was a road that looked like a gateway to Hell itself, this was it.

Reaching Milford itself I was overcome with an unavoidable sense of dissappointment. A tiny, lumpy tourist trap, stuck onto the end of this legendary stretch of water - once called "The 8th wonder of the world" by a visiting Rudyard Kipling. There was a restaurant serving miniscule portions of slop at inflated prices, a car park, the cruise port and a lodge-type accommodation block, which held the only shop that was shut for most of the day (but they advertised the crappy "restaurant" in every room - what odds the lodge and the restaurant are owned by the same people?) .

I felt that I was trapped on a British Motorway service station, albeit one hell of a scenic one. Milford Sound village (or whatever you call it) is geared exclusively for the day-tripping coach mob, you're not meant to actually stay here any length of time as an independent traveller. So, after eating two anaemic chicken legs - which served as the meat section of the "main course" of our "meal", V and I booked a next-day spot on one of the numerous cruise companies vieing for business in the ultra-modern bus/ferry port.

The morning of the 8th was another glorious one, thankfully, and after a bit of a tramp around Milford, which included watching the six-seater scenic flights take off endlessly from the tiny airstrip, we headed onto our boat at 3:15pm.

I had noticed a camera crew filming two blonde bimbos on the quayside, who were doing their best "Paris and Nicole" acts in huge sunglasses and fur-collared down jackets. When we took our seats on the bow of the small cruiser, all became apparent. The taller girl was a British "Glamour Model" (sorry, I didn't catch her name), and when we headed out onto the Sound, off came her kit, much to the amusement of the crew and consternation of the two young families on board. She must have been freezing, the Sound doesn't get much sun due to it's high sides, and the boat was sailing at quite a rate - I was just warm enough in a hooded-top and down jacket.

I took this picture trying to get the bimbo in and some bottle-nosed dolphins swimming in the background. For, five minutes onto the Sound we were surrounded by loads of darting, frolicking sea-mammals. The model was dispatched from molesting the bowsprit, so the ordinary mortals onboard could get up close to the dolphins. I tried to get decent shots of them, but boy can they move quick.

Milford Sound was ignored twice by Captain James Cook on his famous voyages of discovery - he just noted it and sailed on. It is a saltwater inlet of the Tasman Sea, but the amount of rainfall from the surrounding mountains has stained the water dark brown (the freshwater is stained with tannin), and the top few metres is actually this tannin-stained freshwater (I tasted it to make sure, there's a hint of salt, but it's definitely fresh).The Sound is classed as a temperate rainforest, and is abundant with plant and animal life. The deepest part of the Sound is 300m, enough to allow ocean liners to sail and anchor here, as the QE2 has done on a few occasions.

To be fair to the tour companies, the trip on the water is worth the visit here. I can see why Kipling took such a shine to it, but how would he feel now that package tourism has taken firm route? My problem is that it's a very remote place - is it really necessary for tourists to step five feet from their air-conditioned coaches, wait a little while in the air-conditioned terminal to take a trip on a air-conditioned luxury boat? A car park, campsite and a couple of locals in open boats would have made the experience a lot more authentic (and environmentally friendly). There is a small working jetty for lobster fishing hidden from the tourist gaze between the airstrip and the village, this should be enough here.

But, the hands of global tourism are reaching all the former "wilderness" locations of the world. It's a bit sad that Milford Sound has been converted into a miniature Disneyworld for the comfort of a few lazy tourists.

We left Milford on the 9th, and yes, it was pissing down. The long drive east to Dunedin was pretty unexciting after the sights of South Island's west coast. The only event of any significance was driving through Balclutha, at S 46 14'44.1" latitude it's the furthest south on land V and I will be on this whole around the world trip (and probably ever). Napier, at E 176 55'06.2" is the furthest east on land we'll be on the trip also.

We spent two nights in Dunedin, not a bad looking small city (Dunedin is Gaelic for "Edinburgh), very much influenced by Scottish Presbyterians. The low grey skies, Rabbie Burns memorial and general gloom are very reminiscent of a town like Glasgow.

The weather didn't improve much either when we drove to Christchurch on Friday 11th. As it was the weekend, V and I decided to have a curry then hit the town for a night out. The curry was fine, but after a few drinks V began to feel very ill. Next morning we were both sick as dogs and spent most of the day in bed.

So, I haven't been doing a great deal to blog about since leaving Milford. The food poisoning (I'm sure that's what it was, we didn't even drink much) has persisted. It's now the 14th May, we're in Nelson and V is still confined to indoors. I'm not as bad, but we'll take it easy here for a few days and hopefully get to see a bit of the Marlborough region before heading to the North Island again.

Riding High in Queenstown

We have been very lucky of late with the weather. When V and I left Franz Josef on the 5th, it was pouring down once again. The drive south again to Queenstown was another washout. But, this morning the sky was azure and clear, so we took the advantage of taking the Skyline Gondola up the mountain to get a panoramic view of the town and surrounding area.

The chairlift cost $20 a head, but the look on V's face going up, and down (which was shakier), was priceless. I was a bit cruel taking photos of her in distress, but she agreed to put these photos on the blog. My wife really is a comedy turn, I'm still laughing now.

Queenstown has a lot going for it, when the weather is good anyway. There's the usual NZ fare of bungee-jumping, paragliding and a luge run. I'm not into that kind of thing, but I do enjoy watching other mugs edging out to the bungee platforms whilst fighting the urge to paint their underwear brown. For the record, the Skyline bungee is pretty crap - there's a much better looking jump on a bridge north of the town itself.

New Zealand is a great place to drive in, you can imagine the views we're taking in here. Tomorrow the both of us are off to Milford Sound, which promises to be something else again.

 

 

When superlatives aren't enough

That's right, I've been getting more and more worried I was using too many superlatives on this journey, everything was "awesome", "fantastic" etc, and being repetitive. But sometimes even these terms aren't enough to descibe what we're seeing here. So, I'll keep them down to a minimum and instead these photos should give you an idea of what it's like in New Zealand's South Island.

V and I left Picton in the driving rain on the 2nd May. The landscape was covered in more of that swirling cloud that obscured our views considerably the whole way across the island to the west. Some of the downpours were so heavy that I had to slow down to 60km/h to see where I was going. Eventually, when we hit the west coast near Greymouth, the skies eased up a bit, but it was still very overcast.

We picked a wooden lodge just outside Hokitika, and we were in luck - it was deserted apart from one other female traveller, it had a wood-burning stove, and it was very clean. The lodge boasted views of the Southern Alps - but we saw nothing in the falling dusk. V and I were worried that NZ was going to be a washout, with most of our activities affected by the weather.

Right on cue, on the morning of the 3rd we awoke to clear blue sky and saw the jagged teeth of a few peaks to our south - newly dusted with fresh snow from the heavy showers the day before. This was more like it - both of us were almost giddy with excitement to get going. We stopped first at the cobalt blue Lake Ianthe, and the rest of the road south was craggy, winding and full of mouth-watering views in all directions.

We drove south for a couple of hours maximum and stayed in Franz Josef, a small holiday town situated before the famous Franz Josef glacier. These pictures are from yesterday (3rd) and today, where we tramped up to the ice face at the bottom of the glacier.

The walking around here is pretty good, it reminded us of Nepal, the glacier itself is easy to get to - don't let the flashy mountain clothes of the would-be experts who strut and pose down in the village put you off - this is easy peasy stuff, your Granny could make it up here in 40 minutes. Kiwis are lucky to have a glacier so close and accessible, but it's not anything like the Annapurna region or Tibet's once-in-a-lifetime sights. But, seeing a real glacier after such an easy stroll is not to be missed. And Franz Josef is a hell of a lot prettier than Tibet, for sure.

There were loads of danger signs about, and warnings for inexperienced or un-guided hikers, but if you use common sense getting up close and personal to the glacier shouldn't be a problem. Guided parties, crampons and wetproofs on, were heading up onto the steep ice when we got there. I tried a few steps after they left - you've no chance getting safely onto the ice without crampons. I made do with sitting and listening to the ancient ice groan and break, the melt water was pouring off in trickles and some torrents - this tunnel is sure to cave-in sometime soon.

Needless to say, the glacier is retreating at a rapid rate up the mountain valley, global warming is the main culprit. But the authorities have a marker placed at the point where the face of the glacier was in 1750, it's a good few km downhill from the actual face today.