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Published: April 2nd 2009
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Lake Hawea
Paua's favorite Lake After leaving Cromwell, we drove past Lakes Dunstan, Hawea and Wanaka, on our way to the Haast Pass. These are beautiful lakes. Paua decided that Lake Hawea was her favorite of all the ones we had so far seen.
After passing the end of Lake Wanaka, the road wound upwards through bush to the Haast Pass. It didn't feel so very high up, due to the towering mountains which now surrounded us, and as we were in the midst of native forest cover. But soon the rivers were now flowing the other way, towards a hidden West Coast, so we had definitely crossed the divide!
Having been robbed of a few falls viewings by bad weather on the trip south, we jumped at an opportunity to see Fantail falls in an unplanned stop. After a brief walk past mossy trees, a wonderful and surprising vista opened before us - a crystalline aqua river fed by falls reminiscent of a bridal veil.
Everywhere along the shingle-covered river bed were small river-stone cairns, hundreds, made by countless car and bus loads of travelers. There were cairns everywhere, from a few inches high, to ones that stood nearly two feet, spread
across the dry part of the shingle stream bed as far as the rushing water would allow.
In the mythology of ancient Greece, cairns were associated with Hermes, the god of overland travel. According to one legend, Hermes was put on trial by Hera for slaying her favorite servant, the monster Argus. All of the other gods acted as a jury, and as a way of declaring their verdict they were given pebbles, and told to throw them at whichever person they deemed to be in the right, Hermes or Hera. Hermes argued so skillfully that he ended up buried under a heap of pebbles, and this was the first cairn.
Today, people build them for many reasons, to mark their passage, to remember a loved one, to mark a path - as many reasons as there are builders. The cairns here would survive until spring thaw would sweep them away in the swollen river. We each followed tradition and built our own cairns, to add to the multitude, and left a wish for each one as our days of traveling this wondrous land were winding down. Anthony commemorated the moment on film - er, in pixels, that
is.
Just as we were leaving, a group of over 30 young people from a bus tour poured out of the bush walkway and spread themselves around, each busily building. It seemed to be a tradition that visitors to the spot all follow, inspired by the multitude of little stone piles they see when arriving here.
We followed the road on winding hill ascents, and across one-lane bridges one after another that spanned wide river flats of mostly dry silvery shingle. At this time of year, the rivers were almost dry, thin threads of icy blue water making small rapids over the exposed smooth boulders that had been washed down over millennia.
Further along in our journey north, after a winding trip through the forest, we were enchanted by a sweeping sea view and stopped to take pictures. There too, we found cairns had been assembled on the beach area, like a grouping of little enchanted people, all poised and waiting for some big show to begin. They were just lovely, all standing there, as different from each other as fingerprints.
Graci and Anthony took a leisurely walk up to the Sentinel Rock at Franz
Josef Glacier while Paua stayed with the car - a bad cold was robbing her of energy and she had seen the Fox glacier with them not more than an hour before, having walked the path down through the bush far enough to get a good picture of it.
Graci loved seeing and reading about the glaciers, finding how they advanced and retreated .This geological activity has pretty amazing impact on the land, and we saw how in the exhibited pictures at the viewing area how the glacier had changed dramatically in size over the last several decades.
After a night in a cozy cabin in Hokitika, we went to see where greenstone/jade (maori name - pounamu) is turned from lumps of rock into beautiful objects of art and jewelery. There are a lot of pounamu carvers in Hokitika, and we talked to some of them as they worked this translucent jade, much of it found in local rivers. We liked learning all about how the jade is so varied, how they shape it and the varied colour and pattern that it has. There were so very many beautiful things created in the greenstone, it would be hard
The Tasman Sea is calm today
North of Haast, the road sits high above the sea, but this trip we saw no crashing waves. to pick a favorite one. Some of the sculpted art pieces were incredible.
From Hokitika we went north again, this time inland, heading for the Buller Gorge.
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