Susan's Travel Sagas

12-6-2009
Slept ok and had a nice breakfast this AM. Had scrambled eggs with a small side of tomato and mushrooms in addition to the usual NZ breakfast. Weather was not good - overcast and sort of raining. I really enjoyed talking with Jay and Austen and didn’t have much incentive to leave. I was tired, weather was poor!
However, I finally pulled out of there around 10 AM, got some gas and headed off in the direction of Mt. Cook. Oamaru has some really beautiful old Victorian buildings and what is supposed to be a good small museum, the North Otago museum as well as the very famous Whitestone Cheese company. I missed all of these - it was Sunday and I just couldn’t stay there, but wish I had had more time there and had left Dunedin a lot earlier. I heard stories at breakfast about the penguins and how they sometimes just walk down the street in town. Once, the McMillans had gone out for dinner and there was a penguin standing at the entrance to the restaurant as if the maitre’d and another time two were walking down the street together as if they were going out to the movies.

 In the drizzle, I made a few stops/side trips. Saw the Maraewhenua Maori rock paintings on some cliff walls in two different places. In the second the quality was really diminished by the graffiti and more modern carvings into the rocks. Then I drove down a side road to see the Elephant Rocks, giant limestone boulders in a sheep paddock, that look like (per Lonely Planet Guide) “slumbering, mutant monsters (or possibly elephants). Per that same guide these rocks were in the movie Narnia, filmed in 2005. I passed through the small town of Omarama (population 360) which is an area where a number of major hydroelectric dams have been built. I chose not to visit the dams, but did take a side trip off on a gravel road for about 10 km to see the Clay Cliffs. It was raining,  and (per Lonely Planet) are the result of two million  years of erosion on layers of silt and gravel that were exposed on the active Osler fault line. They are on private land. They are impressive and the opportunity was there (which I did not take) to hike all the way up to them.)

I continued on to Mt. Cook in the rain and on the approach could see the snow capped mountains in that area with large clouds obscuring their summits.  Reportedly, the approach is supposed to be beautiful on a clear sunny day with Mt. Cook and the others reflected in the large Lake Punakiki that one drives next to for about 20 miles or so. Once at the Mt. Cook National Park area, I went to the Visitor Center and then to the Edmund Hilary Alpine Center. There were some interesting exhibits and videos at the mountaineering center focusing on how to survive in the Alpine. I chose not to see any movies, etc. at the Edmund Hilary Center because I had little time and thought even with the rain it would be best to get back outdoors and see what I could.

I drove to Tasman Valley with the turnoff just down the road and set off on the 15-20 minute trail to see the Blue Pools, three small lakes/pools that apparently are very blue when the sky is clear (no luck for me - they were sort of greenish) with the rain. After getting to the third pool which involved clambering over rocks that had slid and obscured the trail I came out on a road. Two people were hiking and told me it went back to the car park. I decided to hike up it and see where it went. Well it just kept going up the valley at the base of glacial moraines, over some dirty ice at one point. I know I hiked at least a mile and then decided to turn around. Fortunately the way back was downhill. Once back I saw the sign for the trail to view the Tasman Glacier (which I thought was near the Blue Pools). Turns out I had to climb back up the same mountain that went off the Blue Pools and then continue up. There were some steps, some very rocky areas, etc. It amazed that some fairly elderly people who appeared to not be in the greatest shape were doing this trail. However, once at the top, there was a vies of the large lake which was over the lower end of the glacier and had some icebergs in it. Further up the valley, one could see the main part of the glacier. It is the largest glacier in NZ. By this time, the rain had gone away,  the sky was blue with some clouds, and it was much warmer.  I was glad I had seen the glacier and there were even some helicopters then flying over.  A very nice German woman offered to take my picture.

Back down and to the car. I thought I would go to the other nearby valley, Hooker Valley. I had read that doing the first part of the trail there to the first suspension bridge which took about 30 minutes was good. Well, when I arrived in Hooker Valley ( about 1 mile away from where I had been), the sun went away and I was back in a rainstorm. I did the walk which went to a lookout over a suspension bridge. I took some pictures, but not without difficulty as at the lookout a fierce wind came up. So I had the camera in my homemade plastic bag covering with holes for the lens and viewfinder and was trying to keep the water off the lens by balancing the umbrella which kept getting blown inside out. It was truly a challenge and probably looked very comical from afar. I got a couple of pictures, went back to the car, and set off for Lake Tekapo.

When I arrived at the Freda du Faur (name of the first woman to climb Mt. Cook), the hosts, Dawn and Barry Clark, were just about to leave for a birthday celebration.  However, I was greeted warmly and shown my room and the house. Before bringing anything in, I then decided to go get something to eat as I would need to come back and rest and change before my next activity for the evening.  As there are several salmon farms in the area and salmon was recommended to me, I chose salmon at the McKenzie Bar and Grill. (The area is named for Jack McKenzie who, as it turns out had as his claim to fame stealing and reselling sheep.) The salmon was good, served with a sort of puree/mash of cauliflower although it took a while to get it. I had a glass of sauvignon blanc; the waitress did not speak English very well and, perhaps had difficulty with my accent, because she asked me if it was red or white. 

Back to the B&B, hopefully to rest a bit. However, as I walked up the walkway I was greeted by Sharon from Winnipeg, another guest there. I don’t think she knew I had already been there because she told me Dawn and Barry were out. Rather than rest, I sat in the living room and chatted with her and her husband Ray. This was really the first time at a B&B I had other guests to speak converse with.  As the time drew near for me to leave (tour at 10:15 PM, arrive at 10:00 PM), I got ready for that night’s adventure and put all my many layers back on (which served me well this time.) This night was the Earth and Sky Tour, a trip to the St. John Observatory. It is at about 1400 meters elevation with skies with almost no pollution. It was originally supported by the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Canterbury and still functions as a working observatory. Since light interferes with the real work, when we got about 2/3 of the way there, the buses turned off their lights and we completed the trip in the dark. The observatory is on the top of a mountain requiring something of a winding mountain road to get there, so this seemed to be a difficult and somewhat scary undertaking.

We were given an extra warm parka to wear which I had on over my two layers of thermal underwear, turtleneck, sweat shirt, and warm jacket with fleece.  The extra jacket was a necessity. We were introduced to some basic concepts of distance in the skies and then given a “tour” of what we were seeing.  This included the Southern Cross, the star alpha centauri, six of the astrological constellations including Taurus, (Sagittarius had already set), Orion, Jupiter, and the Pleides (seven sisters). There were three telescopes outside to use and a big indoor one that I saw Jupiter and its moons through. Frazer was the resident photography expert who had a mount with his camera on it and space for three more cameras. It was attached to a motor that moved the mount in accordance with the movement of the stars. Fortunately, there were only three of us there with cameras so he mounted and adjusted their settings and took some nice star pictures. Unfortunately, there was some group filming in the town below, so their big spotlight was shining directly up at the observatory and causing some problems. One of the other people there with a camera was a woman attorney from Amsterdam who works with music copyrights. She and her boyfriend were then coming to the U.S., including LA, but that is as far as we got.  After a warm cup of hot chocolate, we got back in the buses for the ride down and then back to the B&B.