Arthur's Pass

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Thanks for the comments everyone, I appreciate them 😊 I believe I left off at the disgusting glaciers. So yea they were pretty gross looking, not what you would think of when you picture a glacier in your mind. But it was still an interesting experience seeing one and then looking out over the valley imagining when the glacier was larger, how it had carved out the great basin.
After Mt. Cook we headed to Melhvin, (that might not be how you spell it), which is 2 1/2 hours north east of Mt. Cook. When we checked into our hostel I noticed that the last time someone had stayed there was 4 days before. It wasn't very surprising though, considering the town had all of 1000 people, and is normally touristy during the winter because of its vicinity to a mountain range.
The next day, being today, we drove toward Arthur's Pass, which connects us to the west coast. We decided that we would go from Arthur's Pass and head west from there, then south to see the better looking glaciers, before continuing our trek north to the Gold Coast. Considering we are not going to be WWOOF-ing anymore, we have more time to hit all of the major hiking and sight seeing areas.
On the way to Arthur's Pass though, we stopped at a cave that the lonely planet guide recommended. This cave like the last one had a stream running through it. I love New Zealand caves, however, there are not stalagtites or stalagmites because the caves are so young. That's ok though, I can always see those in California. We were thinking of hiking through the cave with our flashlights, because there was an inlet and an outlet which takes all of an hour to hike, but the water was waist high at the enterance so we decided against it.
After checking out the cave we continued up to Arthur's Pass, checked in at our cozy hostel, and did a 2 hour hike. The beginning of the hike was like the hike we did in Te Anau, where the trees were covered in moss everywhere we looked, but this was just a ploy by the trail to get us to walk on it. We soon found ourselves scrambling over boulders and seeing signs such as, "rock avalanches occur beyond this point". It was still cool though doing a different hike than we had before, and as a bonus we both survived, even after passing the avalanche sign!
Mk, that is all for now. I'm uploading two pictures that I forgot to upload from the Te Anau hike we did. Enjoy!

Daniel

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Comments

[Mom]

Your photos are amazing
Your photos draw me in, to Mt. Cook, to the cave, to the moss-covered forest. Have fun. I love you. Mom

[Chris]

Nice pics Daniel,