I had read many places about how busy New Zealand can become during its summer months, January and February, but until recently, we hadn’t seen that many tourists. But once we hit Queenstown, that all changed. And it’s becoming difficult to find accommodations in many of the places we want to visit, with everything being fully booked. This was the case with the Mt. Cook/Aoraki area. So we booked two night in the tiny town of Omarama, about one hour south of Mt. Cook, the country’s highest mt. The first day, we drove from Wanaka, dropped our bags at our B & B, and headed up to Mt. Cook. Mt. Cook is a national park, with a small village of motels, one big and overly tall hotel (who approved that monstrosity?) and the Sir Edmund Hillary Centre. The park contains most of the country’s mountains over 3,000 meters and apparently about 1/3 of it is always covered in snow or ice.

The place was mobbed. We parked at a spot with multiple trail-heads and a DOC campground. We’re coming to understand that DOC campgrounds, unlike our Forest Service campgrounds, are usually open fields where all the camper vans just park one on top of another out in the open. Very unappealing. At least the Forest Service makes some attempt at creating actual campsites with whatever privacy is possible. Anyway, with all of the gawkers, campers, trampers and tour busloads, it was chaos. But we chose that day to go up the Sealy Tarns Steps to get a good look at Mt. Cook and the Mueller glacier. This was a strange walk – about 550 meters of elevation gain on 2200 railroad tie steps. It took us to a small tarn (pond) and lookout where we got a great view of the glacier and Mt. Cook and heard numerous jet-engine rumblings of chunks of ice calving off the glaciers. We obviously lost most of the tourists on this walk and had some nice chats with the (much younger) people walking the steps with us. This walk was not for those with weak knees!

The mob scene at the Mount Cook village and DOC campground.

A view from the car park before we started up the Sealy Tarns track.

A view of the car park and campground from the Sealy Tarns track.

The ugly hotel and Mount Cook village from the track.

Mount Cook from the track.

 

Mount Cook from the top.

Mueller glacier from the Sealy Tarns track.

We kept running into this nice couple.  🙂

The Sealy Tarns track staircase.  There are some 2200 steps.

The next day we drove back up to Mt. Cook, and took the short walk up to the terminal end of Tasman Glacier. The glacier itself was so covered in dirt that only by looking at the terminal end would you know it’s a glacier. In fact, a DOC sign at the viewing place was titled, “And where is the glacier?” The glacier ended at a lake that had only appeared in 1970, and which has grown year by year as the glacier retreats. There were a number of icebergs floating in the lakes – our first chance to see icebergs. We then started up the Hooker Valley trail, to see the Hooker Glacier but didn’t have time to get to the end. However we were rewarded with some lovely views of Mt. Cook/Aoraki, which is really massive. (Oh no, I sound like a NZ TV ad. EVERY ad on TV is announcing MASSIVE sales, MASSIVE discounts, all in MASSIVELY loud voices.) We headed back to Omarama to make sure we got some dinner before the only open place in town closed.

 

Lake Pukaki.  It’s a huge lake that collects the water from several of the glaciers flowing from the mountains.  It’s an amazing shade of turquoise and looks unreal.  The water coming off the front of the glaciers is a milky gray.  This is due to the “glacier flour” it contains, which is pulverized stone suspended in the water.  When this settles out, the remaining water is this amazing shade of turquoise.

Tasman Glacier face.

A closeup of the face with some icebergs on the lake.  The first icebergs Barb and I had ever seen.

This is the stat of the Hooker Valley Track, which we did not finish on account of we ran out of time.  We were NOT alone!

My girl on the Hooker Valley Track.

The next morning, we checked out of our B & B and walked two blocks to the annual lamb auction. There was a large area with about 50 pens, each with about 50 lambs in each one. There was a large crowd there of both buyers and sellers, with the auctioneers moving from pen to pen, selling the groups of lamb by pen. It was real, local NZ. We spoke with Tim and Dave, two young guys who had just sold their groups of lamb, and they said they had just given away their lamb basically. There is a real drought on the South Island and as they say in NZ, their main agricultural product is grass – needed to feed all of the sheep and cows. And without grass, they’re hurting. Tim suggested that we take a detour to see the area where he lives, which has a number of nice lakes and the “largest” hydro dam in the country. Tim was like many New Zealanders that we’ve met. They are all very proud of their country and want to send us to the “biggest” lake, “best fishing”, “highest” this, “most rare” that. And they usually aren’t exaggerating. They are very friendly people who seem to genuinely want to share their country with visitors. It’s very nice. I’m not sure we Americans are as excited about what our country has to offer, even though we certainly have a lot worth sharing.

A short video of the lamb auction.  It was quite interesting.