Wanaka To Rob Roy

From Mt. Cook we drove on to beautiful Wanaka, one of our favorite NZ places, situated on the south shore of Lake Wanaka and a gateway to Mt. Aspiring National Park. It is also the gateway to one of our favorite day hikes in the whole wide world, the Rob Roy Glacier Track. We spent the afternoon walking Wanaka town, doing the opp shops and outdoors stores, and the lake shore and then camped at the Lake View Holiday Park. Next morning, we drove the 54km road, paved for more than half the way, to Raspberry Creek and the carpark there that serves the Rob Roy trailhead. More of Wanaka in later posts...

Lake Wanaka on a sunny March afternoon...this from the beach,
right on Ardmore St., the main drag

Ditto; some think of Wanaka as a sort of mini- or proto-Queenstown, 
crowded and touristy, sort of, but without Q-town's hype or 
uppitiness or extreme-everything

Enormous old Willow on the beach

One old art deco residence

The wind-break belying its great age

Now on the road to Raspberry Creek, watching parasails and
waterfalls

Passing a deer ranch

Deer drive

Glaciers and snowfields above feed the hundreds (!)
of waterfalls in this valley

The road's final 10k or so include 6-8 fords; DOC classifies it
as a "fine weather" track; the weather was fine, going in... 

An unsealed, "corrugated" track, as we called them in Namibia

Peaks all around

Camped at Raspberry Creek...the road does
not go ever on from here; but the government
census-takers were on hand to give us and others
the proper forms to complete...the next day was
March 7th, census day in NZ; we happily complied

 

New Zealand Out-Takes, 2023: Part The Third

Business has been down for the cruise lines, and many have resorted
to carrying freight rather than passengers; here a Royal Caribbean
liner prepares to take on a load of timber, near Picton

Never seen before by me department: a mobile
cell tower...in Marahau

On a give-away shelf 

Doing bars, night clubs, discotheques, would have been so natural

"You're going to put this in your out-takes, aren't you?"
quoth the seagull

"Go ahead...shoot the albatross," the bird whispered

Definitely a South Island thing

Global warming business opportunity: invest in whomever
makes these signs

Wish I'd thought of that...solar-powered dash-mounted
prayer wheel; seriously; better yet, watch this...

Fence of fish skulls and other body parts, Kaikoura

Behind the fence, a cleverly-disguised Morris

Yes, I'm definitely a multitasker

Talk about bankers' hours...

DIY putt-putt range

Dirt kart racing...of course it's a thing in NZ

Jucy ghetto at a campground

At the Dolphin Encounter HQ...before you don your
wet suit

Ace of aces...this bus has downed more than 70 kiwis...

Next time see whether they have something smaller than regular

Any baked goods?!

Yet another business opportunity, if your state/country doesn't
already have one...for bikers, a hearse side-car

At the Mt. Cook petting zoo

Zombie mountaineers

'57 Ford Fairlane hard-top convertible...

The Department of Conservation Office of Legal
Affairs' risk-averse policy prevails again

Mt. Cook, 2023

Our next stop after Tekapo was Mt. Cook/Aoraki national park, New Zealand's great mountain, which we visited in 2014 and again in 2018. As in previous years, we spent a couple nights at the DOC campground there and again did the Hooker Valley trail hike, often billed as NZ's finest day hike. For us, it was a final tune-up for our impending fourth Rob Roy Glacier hike near Mt. Aspiring.

At the visitor center, a helpful model of the environs; the thing to
note is the blue on the horizon...that's the Tasman Sea, which is probably
not 15 miles from the mountain; to get to the nearest coast town on that
side, Bruce Bay, however, you'd have to drive some 250 miles; much of
the South Island is that kind of "can't get there from here" sort of place

A superb visitor center, featuring all sorts of geological,
historical, animal, vegetable, and other exhibits; here,
the local bugs, from sub-montane to alpine

Well-attired mountaineer of yesteryear; actually,

I had an Harris tweed outfit much like this that

I wore while working at the Board of Regents in Ohio;

minus the leggings and boots; also I wore a brown

paisley tie...

Not what I wore to Tiki parties in that era

Many historical pix, not least several of Sir
Edmund Hillary climbing Mt. Cook; the Hillary
Alpine Center, which we visited in 2014, is next door;
what's of interest here is the braided climbing rope...

An example of which was in the visitor center; but no one could
explain to us its use, history, whatever; the ice axes are all Stubai
models, like the one I lost on Warbonnet Peak...a Stubai Nanga
Parbat...seen it?

Virtually the same campsite as in 2018

Vicki on swing bridge #1; what's unusual here is that this is the
most popular day hike in New Zealand, and there is no one else
in the frame; there were hundreds on the trail nonetheless

Rock glacier?

Real glaciers hanging in the surrounding peaks

Many views approaching Mt. Cook

Hooker Glacier in the distance and Hooker Lake (lower bits of 
glaciers are often covered in centuries of rockfall...

Complete with icebergs

Hanging glaciers, waterfalls, all around

A piece of ice from the lake melts into the shape
of the South Island

Up closer of the glacier; no calving while we were there; we've
watched glaciers in Canada, Alaska, Iceland, Norway, the Alps, Nepal,
here...if you want to see calving, there's nothing like Pietro Moreno in
Argentina

Beautiful, formidable mountain

It got down into the mid-40s in the campground our second night
there, and we were glad to move on...it's still summer here