Today...

We drove.

No entertaining stories I'm afraid, but here is a pretty waterfall and some kind of formula 1 boat snapped at Nelson lakes.

Seals and Gorges

The morning was spent kayaking around the peninsula in search of fur seals. It turns out that fur seals are nocturnal and spend all day lounging around on the rocks rather than playfully swimming round your kayak. A fact not revealed to us until we were on the ocean. Points for research... Nil.

It was still a very enjoyable morning, and they at least had one seal on the payroll that obliged for us by getting off its rock and swimming about.

In the afternoon, we went for a walk (shock horror!). We headed up the coast to Sawcut Gorge. As you might hope this is very appropriately named being 100m high and as little as 2m wide.

Getting there involved one of the kiwi favourites of clambering up a river bed. Fortunately it was only about a foot deep as the path could not decide what side of the river to be on.

The kiwi way is to walk through the river in your boots, oblivious to the water pouring over the top.

We wore sandles.

Final mention goes to Mr Cooke, who planted the Norfolk Pines which line the seafront of Kaikoura... Any relation?

Homeopathic sea water

So after a coffee in Oxford, we pressed on to Kaikoura, where the sea is exactly the same colour as the glacial lakes... Which is a bit odd. Usually, one associates this colour sea water with underlying white sand, but here, the rock is dark under the water. So we figured that the water must remember its colour from when it was fresh.

In Kaikoura, we spent the afternoon wandering along the sea-front walkway, and buying the latest technology woollen gear for Hannah... A blend of merino sheep-wool, and possum-fur. Apparently the possum fibres are hollow and both super-light and very insulating. Also they are an introduced pest and are devastating the local bird population. As the saying goes, "the only good possum is one that has been turned into a fetching hat and glove combo"

There is also some folded limestone for Samuel. 

Tomorrow is sea-kayaking with seals.

Cook to Methven

Today was a travel day. We left Cook Village to a blanket of low cloud (no views today) and did our bit for international relations by ferrying a couple of French backpackers the 60km from Cook Village to the road. Then we turned North again.

First stop was lake Tekapo, and the University of Canterbury (astronomical) observatory. Unfortunately, Lake Tekapo is on the main tourist trail, and coinciding with Chinese new year meant that the place was heaving.

Stunning views of Lake Tekapo from the observatory though.

Then on to Geraldine. Made famous by their life size (nearly) copy of the Bayeux tapestry, made entirely out of painted bits of metal taken from industrial knitting-machine pattern-disk-things.

It was truly a sight to behold. The guy who made it was on hand to tell you just how amazing it was. Given that he finished it 20 years ago, it is particularly impressive that he still has as much enthusiasm for extolling the virtues of the thing.

Hannah has seen the original, and this apparently compares well for the following reasons:

1. It is much shinier.
2. He filled in about 6m of the battle of Stamford Bridge, which the original monks saw fit to leave out, much to the creator of this piece's derision.
3. He also re-invented the ending of the tapestry (again several metres) which has been long lost. Apparently the people at Canterbury university (the UK one) fully support his interpretation.
4. Woven into the piece is a code with about 180 puzzles to solve. The creator was very pleased that so far, no-one has solved more than 11.

In all honesty though, it was pretty impressive.

Oh, and before we move on, the very same building houses the world's largest Jersey.

Jags

One for Chris...

We met up with the classic jag that we had previously seen in Fox Glacier.

This time he brought his friends!

Enjoy.

Up up hobbitses, up the windy stair

So, to sum up yesterday, we tramped along a busy road/path, and at the end, saw brief glimpses of part of a mountain, and the rather sad looking terminal face of the Hooker glacier. This all left us in a bit of a glum mood.

What a difference a day/mountain can make!

Today, we climbed the 2000 steps to the Sealy tarns, and then as far again up boulders and scree, to reach the Mueller hut.

Hannah was very glad that we weren't planning to stay at the hut, as it meant that our bags were blissfully light.

What could we see from the top? Glaciers, glaciers and more glaciers, each with multiple waterfalls, and one that even calved an ice fall every 1/2 hour or so, with some accompanying thunder to essentially say 'look at me'.

Oh, and whilst we were sat at the hut gawping at the stunning scenery, the weather finally cleared, and Samuel came out from his cloud! YEAY!!

This of course means that I can safely delete the 100 photos that I took yesterday of a partially cloudy mountain.

Today, we are not in a glum mood. :-)

Mount Cook

The view from the top of Mount Cook (Aoraki) is truly a sight to behold. Or we have heard!

We decided to give the high peaks a miss today, and instead joined the tourist trail along to the Hooker glacier. This involved an easy 12k round trip along an (almost) wheelchair accessible path.

When we rounded the corner and Aoraki appeared before us, it was initially shrouded in cloud (presaging an oncoming storm). Gaps in the cloud slowly passed in front of the mountain, and after about 20 mins, we figured that we'd seen all of it, albeit not all at once.

The glacier has formed a lake at the bottom, which has a number of icebergs in it. Dave fished part of one out for Hannah, who promptly got very cold hands waiting for Dave to take photos with various devices!

Then we made tea as the weather closed in.

The Blue Lakes

Well, blue glacial lakes have probably caused more comments than anything else on this blog, so imagine how pleased we were to find a sign to "The Blue Lakes" whilst stretching our legs after the long drive.

We raced around the corner, and snapped the photo for you.

Cook Village - here be glaciers!

The drive from Queenstown to Cook Village was remarkably boring. There was an awful lot of brown! So it's a good job that it was preceded by the Shotover JetBoat ride! :-)

They seat 15, go at 50mph in as little as 10cm of water, and don't have brakes. They like to throw them into 360 degree spins (think aquatic handbrake turn). The whole ride is essentially a 1/2 hour powerslide. Lots of fun. Just to prove how much fun it was, William and Kate did it last year!

As we approached Cook, the scenery just got more and more and more spectacular, with blue glacial lakes (which we will post a photo of, risking setting Chris off again), mountains, and an enormous glacier that we can see from the hostel lounge window.

Queenstown

As a lot of people know, Queenstown is the centre for New Zealand's adrenalin-packed activities including bungee, sky-diving, rafting etc. So, guess what we decided to do?

Yep, climb a mountain! Admittedly, we used the gondola to do the first 500m up (and back down again) but it was still a 1000m climb! Our legs are getting a bit fed up with us... As you'll see from the photos, it was well worth it for the view.

We managed about an hour in central Queenstown, for tea and cake, but we soon came back to our out-of-town base.

We've relented though. Jetboating in Shotover Canyon tomorrow morning!

Milford Sound

Despite Milford Sound being reportedly one of the most picturesque places on the planet, and the top of every list of 'things to do in NZ', everything that we read about it indicated that it wasn't the place for us. After all, how can anywhere live up to hype like that, or still be beautiful with the inevitable hordes swarming around it?

This was the main reason for our choice of Doubtful Sound over Milford, and as you'll have read in our earlier post, we had a truly amazing trip onto Doubtful.

But, we found ourselves with a whole day to travel to Queenstown (2 hours from Te Anau), and we thought that we should see what it was like, or we would have always wondered if we had missed a true gem.

So we hit the road at 8, in order to beat the tourist busses, and set off for the 2 hour drive to Milford.

Upon arrival, we approached the stunning vista with some trepidation, and as it was revealed, our thought was "Oh, is that it?"

To be fair to the place, the weather was pretty poor, the cloud-base was low and the tide was out. We took the photo (see below), had a cup of tea in the cafe, ate an expensive, though tasty, cake and promptly left.

On the way back, we stopped at the impressive "Chasm" force, which had some pretty rock formations apparently caused by pebbles getting caught in eddies in the river and carving large bowls. Even though there's been no rain for several days, the force was still strong in this one!

There was a cool effect, where there was some kind of standing wave set up perpendicular to the flow direction, and upstream of the force. See the photo below. In it, the water is going from bottom to top. Any explations anyone?

After leaving the force, we went through the Homer tunnel (built as a depression-era work project) which was built to connect Milford Sound with the rest of New Zealand. A side effect of this steep, dark, single-direction bottleneck, made for the best part of the day... Flying back to Te Anau on amazing roads, with no traffic, in a 2.5l Suburu, with a Mostly Autumn soundtrack.

Apparently, the journey takes 2.5 hours minimum... Hah!