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Published: November 19th 2005
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Mt. Cook
It dwarfs everything around it. Well, me made it out of Christchurch with our own transportation, and that has really made this trip a lot better. With our own car we are able to go wherever, whenever, and however without dealing with bus times, high prices, and hordes of people. Now that it's November a lot more people/backpackers are showing for the traveling season here in NZ. We are able to stray away from more of the "tourist" life with our own vehicle. That said, we left Christchurch(ChCh) and drove south along state highway 1 which follows the coastline, and then turned west and drove towards the mountains. We stopped at Lake Tekapo which is a tuquoise colored lake due to the lake being fed by glaciers from not-too-far-away Mt. Cook National Park. This is also where Church of the Good Shepherd is located; it's pretty much just a real old church in a pretty setting. We spent half a day there seeing the sights and driving around on some 4 wheel drive tracks. We are fortunate enough to have a four wheel drive vehicle WITH a map of all the 4WD roads in NZ. This separates us from all the people who have campervans here
Lake Tekapo
Looking west towards the main divide. This water is really turqoise. that are limited to staying on paved roads pretty much. We left Lake Tekapo late afternoon and drove another hour or so south. At this point we are really close to getting the first sights of Mt. Cook, so we pull off on a side road and drive for another hour until we are rewarded with a view of the highest peak in NZ. We were very lucky because there's not many days when you can see all of Mt. Cook because it is usually covered by cloud on either the lower part or upper part. We stopped on the side of the road and took some pictures and had tea. We stayed to watch the sunset on Mt. Cook and the rest of the peaks that make up the main divide. Honestly, I don't think my pictures have really captured how beautiful this place was. We ended up driving a little bit longer down the road to Twizel where we camped for our first night since getting our car. We woke up the next morning and continued down to Alexandra where we were getting jobs doing fruitwork. It wasn't until we arrived at the job place that we realised
Church of the Good Shepherd
At the foot of Lake Tekapo. it was Sunday and they weren't open, so we hopped in the car got out the map and found the closest lake on a 4WD road. We found a good spot right next to lake and set up our camp for the night. That night I saw more stars in the sky than any other time in my life. It was quite cold that night but we put on jackets, gloves, and hats and wrapped up in blankets and sat out under the stars until very late that night. For all you people that know Jimmy Buffett, I recalled the lyrics, "when you've seen the southern cross for the first time...," when seeing the stars out that night with the Southern Cross shining bright. The next morning we woke up, Clint went fishing and caught a nice brown trout which we had for breakfast, and then headed into town to get our jobs. We got set up working at a vineyard back up the road another half hour from where we came. It's right out of the mountains from Wanaka. The work is pretty uneventful. We just raise the wires on the posts so the growing vines have something to
Glow
Only the highest peaks still in the sun's light. wrap around, and we do shoot thinning which is just taking off branches that are small or doubles. They are long days, but we still get morning and afternoon tea, as well as lunch. It gets a lot warmer here than I thought; last week it got 33 degrees(90s). But, it's still a place with vast differences in terrain and weather because while I'm sweating out in the fields my view is of the Pisa Range, only a couple kilometres away, which rises to 2,000 metres. When it rains, there's new snow on these peaks. On the weekends we've been driving into Wanaka, only twenty minutes away. Wanaka is a ski town which is situated on Lake Wanaka and is the gateway to Mt. Aspiring National Park. I have really come to like Wanaka; it reminds a lot of Summit County, CO, especially Frisco. We have one more week of work and then we head into Mt. Aspiring Park to do some hiking then it's off to Fiordland.
I wish I could put more pictures up, but it's take so much time just to put these up. Don't worry, more will come soon. Until then, cheers.
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markham hill
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southern cross
southern cross is a crosby, stills, and nash song bruthuh! p.s. waitin' fo' yo' return so we can play tweezer again!