Advertisement
NZ Day 13
Dunedin to Aoraki (Mt. Cook)
So we had to leave Dunedin sometime….but why did it have to be so soon. I woke up early to say goodbye to my Uncle Cliff and my cousin Ben before they went to work and school. Then I had a second cup of tea with Pip, Ryan and Rhys after I had packed up all my stuff and put it in the car. It was so nice to stop and have a break from traveling with a real family. It was good to see my cousins and I feel like we are growing closer. I feel like I was the closest to my aunt that I have ever been and it was awesome. She is so cool!
When Sarah and I finally hit the road it felt weird to be driving again. I hadn’t driven since we parked the car in front of Cliff and Pip’s house the night we arrived. I hadn’t lost my driving on the wrong side of the road skills, it just felt different to be in a car again.
Our first stop today was at Moeraki Boulders. I remembered coming there
with my family, when we were here over ten years ago. It was a very brisk morning so we were quite chilled walking along the beach to the boulders but we got up our energy quite quickly to run around and play on the boulders. They were fun. I don’t really understand why they are so perfectly round and why the stone looks so different but I think they are very cool.
Our next stop was the midsize town of Oamaru. The cool thing about this town was it’s historic district. We first of all stopped off at the visitor’s centre and watched a little movie on the history of the town. Most of the buildings were built with locally quarried limestone. This limestone was so easily accessible that they built everything out of it. Even the grain stores were built with grandeur. After the movie we took a little walk around the historic district and enjoyed a cone of ice cream. We got Hokey Pokey ice cream which is vanilla made with the honeycomb found in Cadbury crunchie bars. It was delicious!!!!! Unfortunately as we were walking with our cones to view the pier Sarah’s scoop took a
Oamaru Ice Cream
Mmmh There is nothing like Hokey Pokey ice cream on a cold winters day. tumble. She rescued it but it was a little gritty.
Soon we were headed back down the road and we welcomed a view we hadn’t seen in a while. Mountains. We were driving through flat plains looking at snow-capped mountains in the distance. I love it. I love NZ. It is sooo gorgeous here.
We took a little detour near a town called Tizzle down a canal road to view one of the Lord of the Rings sights. It was one of the places where they filmed the plains of Rohan.
Our atlas has little markers for all different filming sights but I recognize most of them to be from Lord of the Rings. This was the first chance we had to actually go to exactly the place where the map said the shooting took place. Unfortunately, I’m not quite the LoR buff enough to recognize it specifically from the movie but I could definitely get the feel for it and generally recognize it. Well it looked like gorgeous NZ anyways and that’s what Sarah and I decided the LoR scenery looked like when we were watching it the other night.
Just before we headed
Bessie at Rohan
See the plains of Rohan from LoR....behind Bessie our dirty girl. up the last stretch to Mt. Cook we came into view of a beautiful lake. It was called Pukaki. I say beautiful because it was the brightest and deepest blue and variations of blue that I have ever seen in a lake before. The water is so blue because it melted from the glaciers that cover 40% of the Mt. Cook National Parkland’s area. In the glaciers and this water there have been crammed tiny particles which reflect the light and make it look very blue. Or at least I think I got that right, it’s something like that. Anyway it was a beautiful sight to see, awe inspiring and a good beginning to our adventure into the Mt. Cook area.
The drive up to our hostel got progressively more icy and snowy but it wasn’t slippery on the road until we were almost at the hostel. The lady at the front desk said the snow should stop tomorrow but it definitely hasn’t stopped yet. It is a beautiful snowing winter wonderland outside now.
Tomorrow we plan to do a little hike to see Mt. Cook and in the afternoon drive less than 2 hours to Lake Tekapo
Lake Pukaki
Look at the blue..... to stay the night there. Then we stay our last two nights in Christchurch. I can’t believe there are only 4 nights left in NZ. It has been magically and will continue to be so………
Advertisement
Tot: 0.147s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0636s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb