On-the-Road Tales

The next day was spectacular, clear blue skies and warm sun. I saw amazing snowy mountains all around I had not even known were there. It was waking from a bad dream of the day before! Our hostel room was choice. It was a 3 bunkbed dorm and the room, tiny, was littered in addition to our backpacks with 6 sets of soaking sopping clothes and daypacks, with passports and documents strewn on the floor in an effort to dry them out, 2 heaters blaring and at least 2 or 3 guys hacking from something that sounded like pneumonia. The other 2 girls in the room were Scandinavian and apparently the cold did not bother them because they were parading around the grounds in bikinis in search of the hot tub, damn nordic. I stuffed my wet stuff into bags and headed for the bus.

We stopped at Lake Matheson where on a still day, you can see reflections of Mt Cook, Aoraki (cloud piercer) and fox glacier. Mt Cook is around 3754 meters, highest in NZ I think. Actually smaller than it used to be as they had am earthquake event within the last 10 years that chopped several meters off the top! Very seismic country, not sure how long before something else big happens here. Today the lake was a bit wavy so not a perfect picture but still beautiful. Checked out Thunder Creek Falls. Lake Wanaka. Lake Hakea. The size of these glacial lakes are like small oceans. 45 km, 5 km wide and some 550 meters deep!

Stopped in Wanaka for the evening and I gor to catch an outdoor photography exhibit Amazing Earth From Above by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. All aerial views of 100 plus countries showing different scenes with an environmental twist. Fantastic.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 12:29 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.