It was another oatmeal morning today. As we took down the tent and packed up the car, things were feeling so routine that I forgot we were hiking Mt Cook this morning and not, as I was waiting to do, driving away.
The trail was supposed to be about three hours, and I was expecting to see a lot of sites. Unfortunately, we realized shortly after starting that we hadn't brought any cameras. My SD card is shot somehow (it isn't even recognized by my netbook), Ian's camera doesn't acknowledge any batteries you try to give it, neither does Wes's, and Zach left his in the car. And so it was left to me to document the glories of Mt Cook and the surrounding glaciers, lakes, and mountains on that most breathtaking of cameras: the iPhone.
The first picture I took was of a small gap in the clouds revealing the snow-covered slopes of a mountain. Mt Cook? Zach was the one who pointed it out, and soon after he noted another break in the clouds off to the left, revealing more mountain. We got to a lookout point staring straight at the area in between our two little windows. As we watched, all of the clouds slowly vanished, revealing ridge of mountains so large and gorgeous we were surprised it was not Mt Cook.
As we watched the unveiling, someone pointed out a waterfall flowing out from underneath the snow. Seemingly on cue, it let fall a big chunk of snow. The sound caught up several seconds later and we realized, even if we had heard it, we never would have seen much of it if we hadn't been looking at the exact spot right when it happened. This was our first and best view of many snowfalls today. We kept walking into Hooker Valley (we took the name totally seriously, I swear), slowly getting closer to the slopes of Mt Wakefield, which were obscuring the rest of the valley.
As the trail led us closer to the mountains, we got ever-more-spectacular views of them:
"We have another mountain!" I called back. Mt Cook was sliding into view.
The first thing I noticed was that, from this angle, the peak actually looked smaller than the ones we were passing. We never got quite close enough to it to compensate for this effect, and I would liked to have gotten another view of it. Nonetheless, it was a gorgeous mountain. It had the most pointed summit of any we've seen so far, which would probably make it an especially rewarding climb. The whole park here is dedicated to climbers. The registration area doubles as an alpine museum (and triples as a gift shop, of course), noting the achievements of the many climbers on the many mountains in this area. There was a catalog of all the people who had died here, listing names, dates, locations, and causes of their demise. There were about 250 of them. The trail we followed included an Alpine Memorial to the deceased adventurers, covered in plaques for each climber. There were a lot less than 250 of these. The walk ended at yet another glacial lake(/river). We had a snack break there and took in the best view of Mt Cook we were going to get.
As I said, this was still a gorgeous view. I snapped a few pictures and regretted only that I couldn't get far enough out into the lake to include some of the very large chunks of floating ice in my shots.
Before we left, Ian dipped his head in the very cold water (not the first time he's done this), only to be outdone by a group of teenagers behind us who swam out and sat on the ice.
The return journey went quickly for the most part. We did have to wait at both of the swing bridges. The first one was just for a small group of people. The second one was for a very timid guy who was crossing the bridge so slowly and carefully we didn't know whether to be impatient with him, sorry for him, or amused at him. He had a goofy look on his face the whole time, like he realized how silly his stride looked, was not comfortable changing it, but was actually enjoying the bridge after all (given that he had almost reached the end). The only delays after that were self-imposed. After we rounded the corner of Mt Wakefield going the other way, we saw and heard quite a few of those snowfalls. We paused for a while each time to scrutinize the snow, looking for the source of the last sound and trying to catch the next one early when it was most impressive.
We hit the road shortly after the hike. Our first stop was Lake Tekapo -- a stunningly and indescribably blue lake; light, bright blue with green, looks almost like we're in the sky and not just above a lake. This was Ian's Windows desktop picture for quite a while last year, and it's kind of incredible that we're actually here now. Even when I knew we were going to New Zealand, I didn't know we would make it to that particular beautiful piece of land. This lake is also home to the Church of the Good Shepard, a small building with an amazing view. The plain glass windows of the church inspire more awe than any stained glass.
After some consuming some PBJs, we got back on the road, bound for Christchurch. I drove this leg of the journey, and the road was as windy and hilly as ever. It's still strange to us to be on a major highway that is not totally flat and straight for most of the drive. We made it to Christchurch and checked into our hostel just outside the city. The girl behind the counter was an extremely enthusiastic American who appreciated the fact that we pronounced the last letter of our registration ("license plate number" = "registration number") "zee" instead of "zed" ("zee" = "zed", evidently... hadn't heard that one yet). We took a quick peek in our room: 6 beds, two already claimed. Artfully textured square metal plate on the wall. Standard enough. We went back to the car to drive into the city -- for some reason our hostel was a lot further from the downtown area than we expected.
Four blocks later, we realized we were rather close to downtown. Unable to find parking, we ended up driving back down the street toward our hostel, parking no more than a five minutes' walk from where we started driving. Christchurch was a a nice city. The streets felt very open, there was a lot of public art, and tram lines wound all around the streets. We split two large pizzas for dinner; Zach and Ian ordered the "Sweet As" (which is a phrase I have since seen on several t-shirts, but have yet to hear anyone use), which was topped with chicken, cranberry sauce, and brie. Wes and I got the Number 119, which had bleu cheese, broccoli, chilli peppers, and onion. Both were great. The Sweet As pizza was so sweet I saved most of my slice for dessert. Even Ian ate a little bit of the brie.
After dinner we walked to the park. On the way there we ran into the Tramway Restaurant, driving around the city while its patrons enjoyed their food. What a great idea!
The park was nice, though we didn't stay long. It was getting dark and we went back to the car to drive the three blocks to our hostel -- at least we were more sure of the parking there. We found the room not quite as we left it. The artful metal plate still hung on the wall and there were still six beds, but now four of them were sporting other peoples' stuff. We asked the French girl who had been in the room since we were last here how many people were already staying there.
"Four", she confirmed. Great. Reception was now closed so we had to rouse the enthusiastic American girl from her room upstairs where she was almost ready to go to bed. Chipper as ever, she pulled out the log, turned on the computer, and declared that we were exactly where we were supposed to be. So were the two girls who had checked in before us. That left the two intruders unidentified. The French girl told us they had been female, but knew nothing else about them. They were nowhere to be found now. Undeterred, our cheerful receptionist went with us to the room and helped us simply move all of the intruders' luggage into the hall, where she unsuccessfully, but politely, rummaged through it for identification. After that, nothing came of the miscommunication. The bags were gone when I woke up the next morning and the only thing Ms. Extrovert said was "Sorry for the mix-up last night, guys!"
Since we were in a hostel and it was still early (not much past 10:00 pm), I decided to seek out a power outlet and settle down to charge things, blog, and transfer pictures from my camera. This is when I discovered that my netbook wouldn't read my SD card. I already knew that my camera wasn't able to take or view pictures with it, but I hadn't used it since the last time I checked it on my netbook. Further discouraging was the fact that the wireless signal where our building was was too weak to use. I ended up typing very little before crawling into bed. At least we're getting doughnuts in the morning.
A few more Mt Cook shots:
wow. just wow.
ReplyDeleteI love all the pictures!
ReplyDeleteProps to the surprisingly good quality of the iPhone and your talent for picture composition. :)
(oh, and the beauty of New Zealand, I suppose...)