Mt Cook and the glacier lakes

The weather has turned beautiful!!! Sunny and crisp like spring in Park City. The sunshine sure makes a difference. We left Christchurch in the morning of 10/4 and Larry braced himself for driving on the left hand side. My job is to read the map and gently remind him when he drifts back over to the right hand side. So far he's done very well. The right hand turns are the hardest because you instinctively look over your right shoulder for oncoming traffic when in reality, they are coming on your left!

We drove parallel to the coast thru land that looked a lot like Eastern Oregon. Rolling farmland, still on the dry side. Then, the minute we turned inland, it looked like Ireland. Steep hillside of the greenest green you can imagine and sheep everywhere! It's all so neat and tidy. No farm equipment or fencing laying around. Just pristine pastureland. I haven't seen one border collie yet which is disappointing but, we did see a statue that was built overlooking a lake of a border collie. The sign said it was dedicated to the Collie Dogs that made sheep farming possible in these wide open lands.

We drove around Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki. They are glacier lakes so the water is this incredible turquoise color. You can hardly describe it. I call it blue, Larry says green. But it is just beautiful from the glacial sediment. The lakes closer to the actually glaciers are a whitish, milky color from the "rock flour" that comes off the glaciers. AFter that sediment falls, they turn the turquoise color.

We drove up to Mt. Cook which had just had a huge snowfall. It is unbelievably majestic but all the hut to hut hiking was closed due to the threat of avalanches. We did an hour hike to the Tasman Glacier. You can see exactly where it stopped (the Lakes) then receded and basically left this huge gouge which is now a valley with nothing growing in it. This is one of the places they filmed Lord of the Rings. (which is huge here, they have Lord of the Rings tours everywhere). Then the valley floor stops at the edge of the glacier. You can take a boat out and go right up to the small iceberg chunks that are floating in the lake. (costs money, we didn't do that, you can see them just fine from the hour steep hike. That's the Moffitt way).

Then we drove back alongside the lake to our B & B just north of Twizel. It was a comfortable set up. It's basically a home with a center central living area with kitchen, dining and seating with a wood stove. You can help yourself to fruit, coffee and tea at anytime and store things in the fridge and even use the stove if you like. In the morning they serve a big breakfast from 8-9 am. They had four private bedrooms with private bath off the central area with heated mattress pads!! Larry loved this. We each had our own setting so he set his for high about 10 minutes before he got in and his side was toasty warm. We liked this better than a heated blanket over the top. They also had private decks off each bedroom with table and chairs so we bought some local pinot noir, plastic cups and sat and watched the sun go down over Mt. Cook.

In the morning we ate with three other couples. One from the UK whose son had just married a New Zealand girl. And two couples who spoke no english. One from Tahiti and one from Belgium. the guy from Belgium had dark black hairs all over the top of his nose. I had never seen that before.

We hiked after breakfast around a kettlehole which is a glacier deposit. When the huge chunk of ice melts, it leaves a giant hole in the ground. The hike is on private property but the farmer basically puts up a sheep gate, you go thru, then there are orange sticks in the ground that you follow. The vistas were amazing. It overlooked the lake with Mt. Cook in the background.

Then on to Oamaru where we are now. This is on the Eastern Coast and it is where they have wild penguins. Larry is very excited about this which for some reason surprises me. But tonight at dusk...we are hiking up these steep cliffs where the penguins are supposed to waddle by on their way home to their nests.

Here are a few musings about New Zealand:

The have odd flavored chips: Chicken and Greek Taziki. We settled on sour cream and onion.

Mustard is expensive.

The area reminds us at alternate times of Ireland, Switzerland and eastern Oregon.

Time to continue our walk around the city and prepare for the penguins. More the next time we get to an internet cafe.

Love, Larry and Terry