Queenstown to Mt Cook

As I leave Queenstown, I hope to get a picture of the cute little steamboat while sailing the lake. But alas, now that I have a camera battery charged, the steamship is moored in the harbour.



So I am getting used to driving the vanette. It is fun to drive on the left side of the road, it was a little 4 cylinder powerhouse, thanks to Grant and the boys at Ascot motors. These guys we rented the vanette from made their business out of buying old vans, and converting them into sleeper vans, and renting them to folks like us. Their hobby, however was to drive cars in races around new zealand. As a result, the vanette performed like a powerhouse! As I listened to the digital voice reorder notes from the last days of the trip, I can hear the vanette performing like a charm in the background.



It does get uncomfortable, mainly with the small amount of space between body and wheel, and the low windshield view was hard, since I had to slump for visibility. I didn't mind the straight back, and it had tons of headroom, easily more than the headroom in my new car which i bought with headroom as the #1 priority. The one thing that I never got used to, is that I constantly went to the wrong side of the vanette to get in to drive it! Once in though, it was easy to remember the left side as you drive while seated on the inside of the lane in both right and left handed driving.



So I leave Queenstown and travel out thru Gibsstons Valley, and there are wineries everywhere. Like Dave said at lunch in Queenstown: the soil here and the climate here on the east side of the Southern Alps are similar to Napa Valley in CA, hence they can and do grow nice wines in this area. The landscape is beginning to look more and more like the American west. The hillsides are now rocky, there is a big beautiful turquoise river that carves out the Kararu Gorge thru the rock. As I enter the Cromwell area, green New Zealand is giving way to brown New Zealand. This whole area all the way to Lake Pukaki is so similar to the American West, that at times I forget which country I am traveling in. Driving on the wrong sides of the car and road are the only reminders, that and the occasional different road signs.


This landscape is brown, the only green is in irrigated farms and ranches, like anywhere in the dry american southwest, with a road as straight as any in texas, fading back to brown mountains in the distance (in all directions). That is until I get closer to the Southern Alps, and then the landscape turns truly Colorado in character, with the irrigated flat planes up to the tall (taller than the front range even) snow capped Southern Alps. The differences are that the other three directions are ringed with the lower brown mountains of the interior, and the native flora consists of different species. Yes this is New Zealand's version of the colorado plateau -- desert high country. So New Zealand surprises again, as I never actually thought I'd see a NZ landscape that is so similar to the landscape I know back home.



The edge of the road is lined with different coloured lupines. Not just blue, but pink, purple, red, yellow and orange. I stop and get some pictures of these lupine. Of course, Lupine is not a native species and it strikes me that here, they are the weeds of the country, like the lily i took a picture of on the Queen Charlotte hike: Ann stating alarmed, "that is a weed!" Otherwise, i am hauling ass in the vanette at 110 - 120 KPH, stopping infrequently to take pictures, and arrive in Mt Cook National Park by 1PM.



This grassland landscape gives way to evergreen forests (just like back home) and a wide glacial valley with bright turquoise colored Lake Pukaki. This is the valley leading up to Mt Cook and the big mountains, and it is the location of Edoras, the Kingdom of Rohan in the Lord of the Rings movie. The turquoise color of the water, I learn comes from minerals from the rock the glacier grinds out of this valley, called "rock flour," litterally fine ground rocks, suspended in the water. The road climbs slowly and steadily to the Mt Cook National Park central village. I stop every so often to take pictures of the jaw dropping view of the Southern Alps on a near crystal clear spring day.


Now it is time for the 20 minute boardwalk to the mountain view. However, this turns into a 1 hour hike. The trail is a boardwalk for a while, but it is also a trail, very similar to a good single track trail in colorado, complete with loose rocks and all. I wish that I had changed into my hiking boots instead of wearing the flip flops (at Liz's suggestion) as i turn my ankle on a loose rock once. But it is not bad, and I make it up without any real incident.

Along the way, there are several sounds like thunder, but it is a blue bird cloudless day. This isn't thunder, it is the sound of avalanches coming down the steep mountains covered in snow and ice -- glaciers in fact. I ask people coming down if they saw the evidence of any of these dramatic noises. Most say no, one group of three people who had been staying at a hut further up the valley overnight said, "yeah, that one (the louder one) was pretty low down. Go to the top and wait, there will be more it happens all the time. It is just that ususally you hear it, turn around and see a puff of white cloud where it had occurred."

I did stay at the top for a little while, but I didn't hear or see any snow slides. As I return back to the base village, I do hear a low rumble like an airplane, but as usual, there are no airplanes flying overhead. Turning back, i see a sizeable avalanche coming down the southern face of Mt Cook! I grab the camera and take a picture, and then make a movie, but the movie is rather jerky, and I think all you really see in the still picture is what appears to be a little white cloud hugging the side of the mountain. I will post it (eventually) to Picassa, when I can get to it, hopefully sometime before Thanksgiving.

I did post a ton of pictures today 22 November from Houston, and they are in Wanaka Release, Wanaka to Queenstown, Driving to Te Anau, Milford Sound Cruise, Lake Marian, and Driving out of Fiordland. The last bit of pictures will be out soon involving the drive from Queenstown to Mt Cook to Geraldine, and the last day in Christchurch.

I will finish Mt Cook and the rest of Thursday's drive to Geraldine next time. Until then,

Newo Out