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.
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.
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!
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!
Well we made it. About 80km and a mile up and down, but it was a lot of fun, and we never reached the emotional lows of the 1st day of the Cass-Lagoon Saddle tramp.
There must be something about the water in Lake Manapouri that we were drinking, as even though there was no alcohol, the evening card games of 'shithead' played until the wee hours (well 10pm ... we had early starts) caused major hilarity. We suspect the people who were already trying to sleep weren't enjoying it quite so much... Maybe this is the origin of the name.
A number of people who do the Kepler, skip the final day, and instead add 2 hours to day 3, and arrange a pickup from an early exit point. We now understand why. Day 4, was pretty much like day 3, but not as pretty, and more full of 'DayWalkers'. These are not vampire hunters, but people on our track carrying less than 10 kilos and smelling nice.
Whilst each day of the tramp has presented it's challenges, and overall, it has been pretty tiring, each day's tramp was somewhat easier than we were expecting, and as a consequence, we have been arriving at the huts by 2 at the latest. This has introduced a problem that we didn't expect.. A lack of tea bags! For weight reasons, we rationed our quota, but didn't expect to be sat around all afternoon.
That said, we still ended up bringing one back... Perhaps we didn't want to be in the unfortunate state of having 'no tea'.
This will be remedied for future tramps.
Next stop.. The pub!
The little bunk room worked a treat with a much better night's sleep for us.
We awoke to rain though, Fiordland rain! We've pointed out previously that we've had very good luck with the weather, but it looked to have run out. So we set off in full waterproofs, relieved that we hadn't carried them over the Kepler mountains for nothing.
Fortunately, the rain soon eased off, and we were walking through a steaming jungle, full of ferns, not-beech trees and lancewoods (more on these later).
One thing to get out of the way before going any further is that Hannah won the Tree Fern game (the rules of which will be left as an exercise to the reader).
The walk continued through the jungle, and the humidity sky-rocketed,and it got hotter and hotter. After a while we started hallucinating strange purple mushrooms. We've included a photo for you so you can see what they looked like.
We made it to the hut by late-lunchtime, and after a refreshing cup of tea, hung out on the beach of Lake Manapouri in the blazing sunshine, taking a dip in the water, which was refreshing for several seconds, before being best described as rather nippy. We're now hiding from the sandflys in the bunk room waiting for our (only) clothes to dry (lack or forethought there).
So, the lancewoods. These are a funky tree that changes its shape completely after a few years. It starts out being long and whippy with spiney downward pointing leaves, and then after the trees mature, start growing bushy leaves in a pompom on top, and the spiney leaves drop off.
We first heard about them on the journey back from Doubtful Sound. A colleague of our guide was getting a lift back, and she was like 'Hey Keith, Did you tell these guys about the funky lancewood in Manapouri", and he says "no", and she's like "Whaaaaaaat?" (imagine a high pitched kiwi accent that's a bit over-enthusiastic here) "How could you not tell them about this tree? This tree is AWESOME!, like usually these trees are like This Big" (makes a circle with thumb and forefinger) "but this one is like big enough to like hug, and it must be way old... " and so on.
Anyway, we saw loads of them today, including a few that had juvenile leaves at the bottom, and a pompom forming on the top. Apparently the first botanists to catalogue them thought that they were different species. They were designed to evade the Moa, so we're not sure when they're going to notice it's extinct and not trying to eat them anymore...
The decision to go the extra mile yesterday paid off, as Luxmore summit was shrouded in mist this morning. The warden encouraged everyone to get out early, as the weather was set to get worse over the day.
So we were on the hill by 8, getting blown around by some gusty winds. Luckily the weather pretty much held off, and we were treated to some truly stunning views, looking into the heart of Fiordland.
As we were on the final part of the ridge, the weather decided to get mean. We had planned to stop for an early lunch, but the increasingly threatening weather caused Hannah to insist that we had to get off the mountain (!). So the long long decent began. Done at speed in true Hannah fashion.
The increasingly switchbacked nature of the path meant that we spent the last 1/2 hour with the hut less than 200m away. But we finally rounded the last corner, and saw the hut. We made it to the hut 3rd of 50, which meant that we had our pick of the bunks. We went for small and dingy (=quiet), rather than light and airy and lots of bunks.
After a well deserved lunch, we went out in search of the nearby waterfall, which was pretty spectacular! (difficult to judge scale, but it is about 40ft)
Final photo is the view from the Hut.
