A Day Trip to the Alps!

It all started Friday night (that's when we usually plan our weekends), when Kimball and I had run through about 5 different options for the weekend. In the end, it was after 9pm before we were in the car headed for Te Anau (the last stop before Fiordland). We arrived at our Backpackers (youth hostel) around midnight. The moon hadn't risen yet and there were more stars than we had ever seen before so we just had to get the tripod out and run a few 30 second shots. See if you can find the Southern Cross below. We were amazed at how fast the stars move (you can just see them start to smudge in that amount of time). Then the moon came up around 1am and we went to bed.

The Southern Cross is found on the New Zealand flag. We have completely different constellations than the Northern Hemisphere and haven't quite figured most of them out yet. Still it's amazing when you can actually see the stars without the city lights and smog!


The next morning we were supposed to meet a friend (Belinda) to shoot some pictures of the sunrise at 5:30am but needless to say, that never happened. When we met up later we decided to check out Marian Lake. I had been there before with my parents on an average day (cold!) and Kimball hadn't been yet. We did the 45min hike, barely surviving the sandflies, and arrived amazed to find the hottest day we'd ever seen in New Zealand. Of course we took a "few" pictures. I just had to go swimming and jumping off rocks. Surprisingly (for a glacier lake) the water was just perfect.

Wandering around the lake we found more fascinating rocks and even more interesting, a couple areas where the water siphons underground (like water swirling down the drain). This glacier lake has only an underground outlet so the massive rushing river we walked past on the hike up, all has to exit the lake by these little "drains" underground. Impressive!

While we were picnicking, Belinda and I saw a couple of shining cuckoos fly out of the forest. Kimball was bummed to have missed them. He must have had heatstroke he says. =) The Rata trees seemed to be all blooming at once. These iconic native trees never grow very tall (30 ft)  but live quite a long time and only flower once every few years.  

A few hours in the sun and out of food and water we took to the trail back to the car. The swinging bridge just before the carpark had this view of the crystal clear Hollyford River.

















On the way, we pulled off a viewpoint and 5-6 Keas were flying and calling "keeeeaaaa" through the forest.