Omarama-Te Anua

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We’re back! OK, first off, we got lucky at Lake Takepo; we had heard from several people how windy it is there, but while we were there it was calm & sunny. On top of it, we woke up in the middle of the night and went outside for a minute and saw probably the most dazzling display of stars either of us has ever seen. The milky way looked like it had a billion stars in it, each a brilliant point of light with no fuzziness…I thought if I reached out I could grab one. Truly incredible.

Monday morning we woke up, ate and hot the road, heading for Mt Cook, and we found out what a windy day in the area is truly like! A lot of the are on the Eastern side of the mountain range is arid desert, so with the wind there were huge dust clouds being blown up. However, the contrast between that and the glacier laden mountains was simply stunning. We got to the Mt Cook visitor center in about 1.5 hours, and then decided to take a drive around to Tasman lake and the nearest and easiest to reach glacier, the Tasman glacier. Thanks to my brother Steve who alerted us to the fact that several chunks had fallen off the glacier into the lake as a result of the earthquake a few days before we left. A 20 minute hike took us to the lake, which as you can see from the pictures, was filled with icebergs of various sizes. For reference, the lake at the part we photographed was between 50-250 meters deep.

After enjoying some time at the glacier, we headed South for destination Omarama, a little town part way down the island that looked like a good destination for the night. When we got to the small town, we found the i-site (there’s one in every city) located at a beautiful spa called Hottubs Omarama. We had planned on staying at a Holiday Park so we could shower, but this was a unique setup we had to take advantage of. The owners had a set of hottubs filled with glacial mineral water that were heated by wood burning heaters; open a vent, and the fire builds up a little and warms the water more. For a small price, we were lead to a large, private area with our own changing room and cold shower and a view of a beautiful pond, and told to take as long as we want. HEAVEN! Afterwards, we were allowed to use the hot showers, and they even filled our water bottles.

We ended up spending the night in a free “DOC” campground, which basically was a large camp where you want area by a river and forest with only an outhouse as accomadation. We cooked from the back of the camper, fought the heavy winds, and then slept through on and off rain.

Tuesday (today) we departed for a long day of driving to the town of Te Anua, our gateway to the Millbury Sound. It was a long day of driving, but through more stunning beauty…the land became greener and greener as we headed South. We did go by some of the areas where Lord of the Rings was filmed, most notably a mountain range called The Remarkables (and they are) and Lake Wakatipu. We made it into the Te Anua Top 10 holiday park in the late afternoon, but were still able to book a tour for Millbury Sound tomorrow. We catch a glass top bus at 7:30, let them do the driving, and then have a 2 hour cruise out on the Sound. We thought about trying to tour the local glow-worm caves too, but it was little too much for our time here. More to come….

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Photos

Tasman Glacier
The glacier is covered in dust, so all black, except white spots on its face from where pieces have recently fallen off

Comments

[Diane Hamako]

xoxo
I am enjoying this blogging business!