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Hi All,
Hope you are all doing well. It is so weird to think that I have been gone for over 4 months now, while I have definitely had my moments of missing home and often wish that people from home were here to experience this amazing country with, I can’t believe how quickly time is flying by. I have just over a month left until I am home. While “I have done more this semester than anyone my age should” as my family keeps saying, there are still so many things that New Zealand has to offer. This past weekend, for example I went on another trip and saw a part of the country so different from what I have seen. Thursday evening Anna, Ally, Emily (a really fun girl who came through the same study abroad program as me), and I set off to Wanaka to spend the night at Chris Jones “Jonesie” house (one of Scott’s good friends).
We left his place at around 7 the next morning and set off to the west coast to begin the Copeland track. It was pouring rain (we later learned that 89 cm fell in about 5 hours) so
we stopped at a department of conservation office who basically laughed when we said we wanted to do the hike. We learned that there were about 15 river/stream crossing and flash flooding with heavy rain on this track, so much to our disappointment we were told that we could check the river level of the first river but most likely were not going to be able to hike on Friday.
We set off to the track anyway to check the river level and while we found the river practically overflowing and definitely uncrossable we did get to see a gorgeous rainbow. We also, in the process of trying to find the flood bridge managed to get Emily’s shoe sufficiently stuck in the mud. But after deciding that trying to hike the track was probably not a good idea, we headed off to the Franz Joseph glacier where we did a short walk to get a view of the glacier. It was fairly cloudy but the glacier was still really cool to see. We then headed to Lake Mathison, one of the most photographed lakes in New Zealand that reflects Mt. Cook and Mt. Aspiring on a clear day. While it
was not clear I still got some pretty cool pictures. We stayed in a hostel in the Fox Glacier Township and headed to bed at about 8:30pm so as to ease the blow of our 5:30am wakeup the next morning.
Early Saturday morning with it still dark we set off on the Copeland Track in attempts to make it to this hut which has natural thermal springs next to it and back to the car park (as they say here) in one day. To the hut one-way was estimated to take 7 hours. So we set off in the darkness at a pretty good pace but were slowed at points by swollen rivers and waterfalls that ran down the hiking trail. After stopping for only a total of about 10 minutes in about 5 hours, we realized that we most likely were not going to make it to the hut and back to the car park unless we hiked for about 2-3 hours in the dark. Seeing as it was pretty rough terrain we decided that would not be such a good idea so had to turn around after another hour and 15 minutes of hiking probably 1 hour
short of the hut. It was kind of frustrating but the hike had some gorgeous views of snow-covered mountains and we all felt as though we had a pretty good workout after hiking almost 11 hours. I am happy to report also that my Achilles, while sore, did not hurt too much. We arrived back at the car park just to catch a stunning sunset and were welcomed back to the hostel with warm showers and comfy beds. Sunday was not such an early start but we were still up around 8:00. At 9 we headed across the street to meet up with the touring company that lead us on a four-hour hike/walk on the Fox Glacier. While we were all pretty sore from the day before the glacier tour was really cool. We got to learn all about the glacier’s history and about glaciers in general. It sounds dorky but was actually pretty neat. At about 2 after changing from the hike and grabbing a quick lunch we headed off on the 8-hour drive back to Dunedin. Arriving in Dunedin just after 10 we were all pretty tired but all agreed it was a great weekend trip. Well that
was a pretty long post for just one weekend but enjoy the pictures and congrats for making it to the endJ Miss you all!
Love,
Emily
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