We traveled
many miles from Akaroa (the port town being used since the Christchurch
earthquake) over the beautiful and ever changing landscape of the south
island. This included crossing the Canterbury
Plains, traversing Burkes Pass and finally on to our destination in the ‘Southern
Alps’. We had a number of stops along the
way, including Lake Tekapo, where we checked out the Church of the Good
Shepard. If you google this, you’ll find some wonderful photos – mine don’t
even come close but it is a pretty spot.
Late in the
afternoon we arrived at Mount Cook airport and went off on a ski-plane
adventure flying around Mt. Cook and landing on a glacier. So cool!
And, I got to be co-pilot! There
were a couple of times that I thought the pilot was forgetting to turn as the
mountain kept getting bigger and bigger in front of me. But, I think he’d probably done this one or
two times before as I survived quite nicely J.
Coming in for a landing...
OK, close enough to that mountain top. Please turn now!
Glacial
water runoff to the lake below.
We spent the
night at the Hermitage Hotel where we had rooms with huge picture windows
looking out at Mt. Cook. The next day we
drove to Dunedin where we met up with the ship.
This gave us the chance to see more of the countryside as well as a few
towns along the way. One of our stops
was at Hampden Beach to see the Moeraki Boulders. These enormous, round rocks measure up to 12
feet in circumference. If one could lift
them, one could imagine them being used for marbles or bocce ball. Alas, no Maori stories of giants, so I guess
that theory is out.
Today we
were in and out of the New Zealand fiords on the west coast of the south
island. I’ll post a few photos within
the next couple of days.
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