This morning we actually slept in to 9 am so I guess the adventures of yesterday took a toll on us. We woke to broken clouds and the hint of better weather. However, by the time we finished breakfast it had clouded back in and was starting to rain. I am not sure of what is happening, but we have not been getting many breaks for weather this past week.
We had been told of a cheese factory in town called Whitestone which makes cheese from cows milk, goats milk and Ewes milk. So we decided we would have to stop by the factory and check it out. We had a sample plate of 6 types of cheeses as well as a coffee. We really enjoyed the different cheeses and each had our favourite. Wes discovered he really likes Goat cheese and I preferred the aged and smoked cheeses. The pictures show the cheeses we sampled.
We headed out for Mount Cook where we hope to get in a couple of hikes – weather depending. The drive was really enjoyable since the further we drove west and north the better the weather. Also we were driving through the central part of New Zealand (South Island) and we started to see a lot of similar landscape to our area of BC. It was interesting to note that the river that we were travelling beside had several dams (we counted 4) at different places so they really are taking advantage of this river for hydro electric generation. Also this area seems to be dryer so for agriculture they need to have irrigations systems in place. These created lakes helped with that I am sure.
As we got close to Mount Cook we started to drive along Lake Pukaki. This is a very large lake which is colored with silt from the glacier. The soft aqua color makes this a beautiful sight.
Our campsite location is about 20 km from Mount Cook, since there are no suitable campsites in the Village of Mount Cook. We settled and then drove on to Mount Cook so we could take a short 1 hour hike up to view the Tasman Glacier. When we got there we discovered there was a walk to Blue Lakes that branches off from this trail so we decided to check them out too.
The Blue Lakes really are green in color. There are 5 in a row and to see all of them you need to take the parks trail to the first one, and then follow a narrow track around the lake and over rocks etc to find the 2nd lake, and continue this for all 5 lakes. It was an interesting track but since it was not raining (actually broken clouds above us and clinging clouds to the mountains around us). We returned the way we came in and continued on to the lookout for the Tasman Glacier.
From the lookout atop the moraine we looked down onto Tasman Lake which is fed from the melting Glacier. In the lake there are several ‘bergs’ from the toe of the Glacier. The size of the lake is deceptive and only when you see the kayaks or boats in the lake do you realize how huge the bergs are and how large the lake is.
The Tasman Glacier is New Zealand’s largest Glacier which maybe hard to imagine. However what you see is deceptive since you feel you are looking at a rocky landscape when in fact you are seeing a couple meters of rock covering ice that is hundreds of meters thick. However, it is true that the Glacier is a receding one loosing about 0.5% of its mass each year. At the same time the Tasman Lake is getting larger each year.
We returned to the car park but before we got there we took a 3rd track which took us to the edge of the lake where the boats are launched. The water looks very dirty, but we got a new perspective of the a couple of the bergs.
We are hopeful that tomorrow we will have a clear sky so we can see the top of Mount Cook or at the very least another day without rain and broken clouds so we can enjoy the Hooker Valley walk.
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