Mt. Cook and MacKenzie Country

Having enjoyed the Otago Peninsula we drove the coastal route up to Oamaru, stopping at Moeraki to see the boulders. At this point the road turns west, back inland along the Waitaki River valley.

The key features of this river are the eight dams and lakes which have been created as they provide a large percentage of hydro electric power being fed from the glacial Lake Pukaki. This lake is generally considered to be the most beautiful in the country due to the effect of Blue Crush. The blazing turquoise colour is due to the sediment (rock flour) in the water created by the rock on rock action of the glacier grinding out fine particles that are suspended in the melt water, this sediment gives the water a milky quality and refracts the sunlight.

The Aoraki(Cloud Piercer in Maori)/Mt. Cook National Park is a World Heritage Area. We visited the Sir Edmond Hillary Museum before taking a boat tour on Lake Tasman. When you are only a few kilometers from New Zealand's highest mountain (3755M) the last thing you expect to see is a maze of icebergs, note the blueness of those farthest away, new is blue as the sun has not yet affected them. The ice is centuries old but the lake has only been there for 30 years.

The ice strewn lake is a dynamic environment, there is always the danger of an iceberg breaking up and with a decent wind such as we had the location of these floating islands was changing constantly. Higher up the Tasman Glacier is a spectacular sweep of ice as we saw from our helicopter ride a couple of weeks ago. In the ablation zone (where it melts) it is quite ugly, as it is horizontal it melts from the top down exposing the stones and boulders and forming a lake, as you look to the shore the rock line clearly shows that the glacier at one time was 600 meters above lake level.

As is often the case Mt. Cook did not show it's face today, it stayed in the clouds, but the ride back along the lake in the afternoon was stunning as we made our way to Lake Tekapo.