New Zealand Trip: Day 3 – Fri 5th Feb, 2010
We woke up at 6.30am, unintentionally but happy to be able to get the most out of the day. I could hear some birds calling from outside. Around the hotel are notices warning about feeding the Kea, local parrots, they can cause damage to the hotel and pinch personal belongings. We had a painting of 2 Kea picking at an old black leather boot.
Out on the balcony looking to see where the bird call came from, a Kea was sat on the railing of the balcony next door. As parrots go these are not very pretty, they look more like a cross between a parrot and a hawk.
We also saw a pair fly in front of us outside the hotel later in the day.
At breakfast buffet we were a little more restrained than on the previous day but still had enough to see us past lunch time. We were in the lobby for 9.40am ready to be picked up for our glacier adventure.
Glacier Adventure
a 25 seated bus picked us up and drove 20mins to the Tasman Lake car park. A 30 min walk through a moon like rocky landscape. The Tasman valley was incredible. High mountain sides with a flat rock strewn valley floor, 4km across, although because of the scale of the mountains it only looked about 1km, truly amazing! It wasn’t until we had to walk to the lake we could comprehend it. No matter how far we walked the other side didn’t get any closer, and still looked about 1km away.
We came to the top of a hill and looked down to lake Tasman, a small hut and boat jetty. As we neared the hut out guide approached us with our red life jackets. We boarded the boat and were given the safety talk. As a demonstration of how it wasn’t a good idea to fall off the boat we were asked to put our hands in the water for 10 seconds. It was freezing cold, as you’ed expect from glacier melt water. Typical glaciers are 1/3 above the water 2/3 below the water line. Here they are 1/10 above and 9/10 below. Some of these glaciers must have been huge.
Apart from the 3 boats on the lake and a helicopter that looked no bigger than an insect on the other side of the valley, we were the only signs of life.
The filled the valley floor. It’s milky appearance caused by the glacier flour, powdered rock caused by the glacier crushing rock as it moves downhill. This mixture also means that sunlight doesn’t penetrate the surface and therefore there is no life.
Our guide moved the boat along side the ice berg so we could reach out and touch it for ourselves. Where the sun had shone on the iceberg the ice had formed into separate ice crystals, and now were all sat next to each other in a massive iceberg jigsaw. At places you could pull ice crystals away, and there were plenty floating in the water. Holding those ice crystals up to the sun caused a rainbow of light which danced and sparkled. Our guide would gently nudge the boat against the smallest iceberg to cause it to roll over exposing the blue ice untouched by the sun. As bits melt and fall away from the ice bergs they rock and roll in the water to balance and find the 10% that it needs to sit above the water. This process can take hours before the ice bergs settle and balance again. We couldn’t get very close to the glacier face as the under water glacier shelf, created by ice falling off the exposed face above the water, is unstable and could break off. this happened once in January and created a 3 meter wave that swept across the lake and covered the boat jetty, 6km at the other end.
The lake, ice berg, glacier, mountain range and snow capped peaks are possible one of the most stunning places on the planet. A truly unique experience, quite spectacular.
After disembarking the boat and walking the 30mins back to the park we were rewarded with 10mins relaxing at the clear water stream where we dipped our feet in the cold water.
Back at the Hermitage for 1pm. Our cases were packed in the car and we planned to leave for 3pm. 2 hours of relaxing on the veranda of the cafe enjoying the panoramic views of the mountains. We downloaded all of our photos on to the computer, had some drinks & shared a cup of chips.
By 3am we were in the car and waving goodbye to mount cook. One last photo from Peter’s view point over looking Lake Pokaka close to route 6.
I was feeling tired so at Twizel we stopped for ice cream and an energy drink. 5 mins later we were back in the car and eating up tarmac. The drive was really pleasant past lots of small habitations, and windy roads through the hills. for a major road to Queenstown we were surprised to only see a handful of cars all journey.
When we came to Artogia our of the mountain the road was littered with vineyards. One of them was Wooing Tree, Mary sampled a glass of the Rose at our evening meal in Arrow Town. We stopped in Cromwell for drinks. Then quickly carried on toward Queenstown. On a whim I fancied driving through Arrow town, and I’m glad that we did. An old gold rush town this place is a treasure trove of shops and restaurants.
The main street could be straight out of a spaghetti western.
We looked at several restaurant menus but the most impressive one was at.
Mary had the cod with mussels and I had a trio of curries. As a free compliment we were given a bloody mary, like the drink, a whole tomato pickled with tabasco sauce. etc. It was unusual but brilliant. the food was equally fabulous and the service perfect.
Mary didn’t feel well towards the end of our meal so we set off quickly to QT. The gold ridge hotel was easy to find, we checked in and went to bed.
About Robert Lavender
