5 minutes away from Tauranga bay, one of the largest colonies of New Zealand Fur seals.These are beautiful animals, and we all enjoyed watching little seal-groups (looked like families to us, but unlikely) do their stuff on the rocks far below, not knowing that just a week later, we'd be far far closer to the next seals we saw. Even Dorka (not normally terribly interested in things that can't talk), was transfixed and took millions of photos of them.
The afternoon's drive brought us further south, and on the way we stopped off to view the mysterious pancake rocks at Punakaiki. They're very beautiful, as the soft rock has been eroded into castle towers ot perhaps odd skyscrapers -but the photos don't really convey the full impression of coures. There was great little tourist centre (as they all are in NZ) with info about these odd flattened rock formations and the blow holes that spew huge amounts of water when the tide is right.We stopped a little before the galciers at a place called Ocarito, a huge swamp that has amazing meandering waterways best explored by canoe. Dorka, being the experienced canoe-hero went off
for a day's paddle, while Lara and Emma and I spent the day in a wonderful little summer cabin, (probably our best accommodation of the whole trip,) trying to get video of Lara learning to crawl. (she was fast) Outide it pored with rain all day, and I kept expecting to see Dorka squidging back to us. Meanwhile the canoe hire guys had decided to pick her up in a motor boat, but she impressed them with her stroke (or something like that) and they decided to let her keep on if she wanted to. She did, and returned hours later, totally soaked to the skin, but triumphant. There wasn't much to see, but we include a photo of it anyway....After this the weather stayed awful for days, well most of the next 2 weeks actually. We had read and heard that it rains a lot in this part of the world - that's what makes glaciers, after all, and here there are 2 massive ones! But somehow, we hadn't really realised what a dampening effect it could have on our spirits, especially when 90% of the attractions are outdoors things.
Luckily, when we stopped in the little town of Franz Joszef, at the foot of the glacier of the same name, we picked a campsite that was starting to fill up with other families now, and that kept the little ones busy so Dorka and I could take it in turns to do the glacier walk. I got the morning when the sun poked out from behind the clouds, Dorka got the cloudy version (but at least it wasn't actually raining for those 3 hours!)
The glacier hikes here are, like all NZ activities, faultlessly organised. You are issued with everything from boots to jackets. As long as you turn up in underwear and a hat, you'll be ok, then your personable guide 
whisks you to the trailhead by bus, and then on up into the river valley and eventually up onto the ice itslef, literally hacking steps into steep ice-cliffs using a massive axe. Walking up a glacier is fun, you get to wear crampons (those steel spider things that fit around your boots) and kick your way up ravines and over humps and lumps until you reach your goal. Our goal was just to reach the older blue ice and take the obligatory blue ice photos (it IS very pretty) before turning back, which we did after about 2 hours.Even
though it was New Year's Eve, it was a hard job staying awake 
until midnight following all that climbing and trekking. Funnily enough, it wasn't worth it. There were a few cheers from the camp, as the clock struck midnight, and I think someone even let off a firework, but then by 12:03 it was silent again. This marked the beginning of 2009, which meant the beginning of the last month of our trip - the last 15 days actually, so now the race was on. We had places to get to...
No comments:
Post a Comment