Shari and I hiked up Mt. Roy today. The trail went through private farmland and was basically a grassy dirt road surrounded by bushes and grass where sheep and cows grazed. The most unique feature of the trail was the cow and sheep droppings. It was covered in sheep and cow dung and we saw lots of sheep and a few cows. I took a picture of a sheep who was kneeling on its front legs eating grass, with its back end up in the air (I'm told they do this quite often, but I've never seen it before), and of one cow (who didn't look too happy with me in its territory). There were quite a few fences and some styles to get over them, which I haven't seen since the AT. I think the farmer uses the road to drive up and move his livestock to different grazing areas.
A pretty significant day hike - a long steep up, which of course meant a long, steep down. The park was at 1,578 meters. I don't know the starting elevation but I know it was a long way up. The 16 km round trip took 5.5 hours including lunch at the top. It was so nice to lay down in the grass and dirt and put my head on my day pack, eat my sandwich and relax in the sun. My only problem was my knees hurt quite a bit on the way down.
The views reminded me of those on the Kepler Track up near Luxmore Hut - patchwork farmland and the fingers of Lake Wanaka going off in the distance, surrounded by mountains.
After we finished our hike we went to Puzzling World. It was great. There was a room full of holograms, a tilted house, a huge maze that you had to walk through and find all 4 towers. It took Shari and me 35 minutes to do the maze. The hardest part was finding the exit after we located the stairs to each tower. We then sat in a roomful of tables with all sorts of puzzles on them, and each worked on a puzzle for about an hour.
After dinner I drove Jackie to town (about 3 km) because she had tickets to a show at the Cinema Paradise. I then came back to watch one of my favorite shows - The Academy Awards. All in all, a good day - significant exercise during the day and good entertainment at night.
3/25: Shari and I chatted with Jackie at breakfast, and Jackie and I exchanged home email addresses. We talked about the possibility of getting together in 2005 to hike the 600 mile South Coast walk in England, and/or my going to Australia to tour with her for a month or so in her camper van. Here I am only one month into this trip and I'm already thinking of things for 2 years from now.
Shari and I headed for Mt. Cook at just after 9 AM. It was a 200+ km drive - easy roads, not much traffic. We stopped to check out the town of Twizel on the way here. Nothing much there. It was a town that came in existance in 1968, built to serve the nearby hydroelectric power station.
We got to the Mt. Cook area and got a tent site at Glantanner Park. Another great bargain at NZ$10. Not many campers, we have a great view of Mt. Cook and they have a big common room with tables and a tv, a kitchen with some stoves and sinks and refrigerators, and bathrooms out back. The kitchen/tv room is about a 2 minute walk from our tentsite.
We then drove up to the Hermitage Hotel and did a couple of short walks in that area. Next, we drove along the Tasman Valley Road (a gravel road about 8 km from the hotel) to do a couple of walks to see the Blue Lakes (they were green, not blue) and the Tasman Glacier. The views of Mt. Cook were nice, but the view of the glacier was mostly just the icy, grey sludge of the Terminal Lake. I did take a picture of some small icebergs floating in the lake.
We were going to go back tomorrow and do a longer hike up the Hooker Valley for more views, but we decided it wasn't worth the time. Except for looking up at Mt. Cook and looking at the turquoise-colored water of the Hooker River on the drive in, the scenery isn't that great. Mt. Cook (at 3,755 meters) is the highest peak in Australasia, and the Mt. Cook National Park has 22 of the 27 New Zealand mountains over 3,050 meters, but if you aren't a technical mountain climber, I don't necessarily think the drive up here is worth it. There is only one main road that comes here and we now need to basically drive back south to Wanaka to then drive North to get to the Fox Glacier.
Supposedly there are some great walks there where we can also get great views of Mt. Cook. So tomorrow, we will get up and start driving again. It will probably take about 5 hours to get to Fox Glacier. So far we have done really well picking out hostels and camprgrounds and I hope we keep getting the good ones. I think most of the places are good because New Zealand is so geared towards the out of doors that they just provide great facilities for walkers and trampers.
We are sitting in the common room at Glantanner Park. There is a table next to us of 10 people (maybe German - 9 men and 1 woman) who have just cooked themselves a feast - great salad, bread, corn on the cob, beef and pasta, and it looks delicious. Shari and I are going to reheat leftover french fries from lunch and scramble some hamburg. Not quite the same as the other table - sure wish they would give me their leftovers.
Speaking of food (which I do quite often) we are now into taking ice, along with salt and mayo. Shari teases me because I always fill my small travel salt and perpper shakers with the salt and pepper from restaurants. I always take mayo packets wherever I see them. Well, she likes lots of ice with her diet coke and today we went in the fancy Hermitage Hotel (rooms range from NZ$340-475 per night) and took 2 small buckets of ice from an ice chest, which was supposed to be used by guests only. It's amazing what you do when you're a vagabond travelling around the world.
