Feb 23 - Feb 25:
It's been another busy week for us, with loads of driving and lots of pretty lake scenery! (And very little internet access). Here's a quick summary:
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| Lake Tekapo |
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| Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo |
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| Barry mistakes a horse tie-up for a ballet bar at Lake Tekapo-oops! |
On
Wednesday, we visited Lake Tekapo en route to our 2 night stay in the small town of Twizel. Lake Tekapo is a beautiful icy blue colored lake, surrounded by mountain scenery and tussocky hillsides.
Looking over the lakefront is the tiny Church of the Good Shepherd, built in 1935. We hiked to the summit of Mt. John, and returned via the lakeside, a hike of about 3 hours length. We soaked up the views even though it was drizzling rain and cloudy, and slurped up delicious mochaccinos from the coffee shop at the top. There is an astronomy observatory at the summit run by the Earth and Sky company http://www.newzealandsky.com/earthandsky/index.html
- something you can visit at night to look at the stars. Interestingly, this was one of the few walks we've done in NZ that wasn't crowded on the trails - a nice change.
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| An overcast day looking into Hooker Valley |
On
Thursday, we drove past Lake Pukaki on our way to Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. Our plan was to hike the very popular Hooker Valley Trail, which takes you along the valley floor and gives you good views of Mt. Cook peak. The day was mainly overcast and windy, and we started our hike mid morning. The trail was very busy, it seemed there were hundreds of people walking this trail that day. Again we felt like we were one of the few Canadians here - most of the visitors were either British, German, or Asian, and age-wise, we are not the common demographic. Most visitors we've come across are either 15-20 years older or younger than us.
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| A spiky Golden Spaniard plant |
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| Tasman Glacier & Tasman Lake - see those icebergs! |
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| Amazing view from Tasman Glacier lookout |
Overall the trail was more of a walk than a hike - very few gains in elevation, and it's a one way track so you retrace your steps back. I think this walk is overrated in terms of views and variety of scenery. Maybe it was because of the high clouds concealing the peaks at times, or the crowds, but the highlight was probably seeing the glaciers clinging to the sides of Mount Sefton and Mount Cook.
The Visitor Centre in the village is worth a look - great history of the mountaineering in the area, including artefacts from times past including the wooden slats they used as skis and the changes in camera technology over the years.
Another stop worth visiting are the Blue Lakes from the Tasman Valley Road (8 km of gravel road off the Mount Cook Road). A 20 minute hike up gives you fantastic views of the Tasman River Valley and the Tasman Glacier, the largest glacier in New Zealand. The Tasman Lake below it is full of icebergs, and a huge chunk of the glacier actually broke off during the earthquake in Christchurch - causing some large waves and scaring the heck out of the boat passengers visiting the glacier at the time! (No one was hurt, by the way.)
That night as we ate our pizza at an outdoor cafe in Twizel, a family of Canucks happened to site down beside us. The friendly dad told us they were from Humboldt, Saskatchewan, and had traveled to NZ for a wedding. They were in the CBD of Christchurch when the quake hit, and were lucky the parking garage their rental car was in didn't collapse. They basically just jumped in their car and fled out of the city like everyone else and ended up in this area.
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| Barry and Nat at the Wanaka Lake Lookout |
Friday we left Twizel and drove another hour to Lake Wanaka. Who knew this was such a happenin' town? We think maybe they're competing with Queenstown to be the tourist attraction of the area. Here's where we started to see people with money to burn - big holiday homes, fancier restaurants, nice cars. The lake front area is full of restaurants and people out for a stroll. After enjoying a sloppy beef burger and yes, fries again, later in the afternoon we set out for a quick hike to the Diamond Lake loop. After a bit of a grunt up, we were lucky to get some late day sun and some fantastic views of the surrounding mountains, towards Mount Aspiring National Park to the northwest, and south to Lake Wanaka. We heard and saw lots of birds in the forest canopy. Wish we'd had more time in Wanaka, there were other hikes to nearby summits that would provide excellent views of the area.
Oh well, next day we were off to Te Anau via Arrowtown.
