Thunderstruck

We take the Zodiac to land at a low lying glacier, "Pia". In the time we're there, every five or ten minutes, we watch bits of glacier from boulder- and car-sized pieces to entire buiding-sized faces fall off into the channel below. The thunder of ice crashing into the channel below is almost as impressive as the ensuing wave of sea and  icebergs.

Photo: Frithjof Behne

I've seen Bear Grylls walking on glaciers and claiming it is highly dangerous. If Bear Grylls can do it, I'll be damned if I'm going not going to. Afterall, you can't go this far, and not go farther. I meander off from the group, as I suspect a glacier walk would not be recommended by Pascale. I get as near to, and as close under Pia as I dare, then find a nice spot to relax with the uke. I play one song, but at an increasingly high tempo as I become increasingly conscious of how dangerous my spot is. I'm ready to run, but on ice, I'd struggle.

When I return to the group, now on the rocks, a little way away from Pia, we watch another big wall of ice fall. As I'm enjoying the wave of ice come at me, I have to exclaim "shit!" and make a short dash further up the rocks. I'm surely glad this piece didn't fall thirty minutes earlier.

In the evening, we're sipping Chivas on the rocks - glacier rocks.

To the extent I can remember how it goes, I can now play Mark Knopfler's very pretty Local Hero theme.