April 30, 2006
Winter? Ow no!...
Ok ok ok, I admit it, this picture is slightly doctored in Photoshop by Kaitsu. But only to reveal what was there anyway - an amazing sharp contrast of snowy peaks and brownish-greenish rocky slopes.
We spent 3 full days in Wanaka, a town up the mountains, and as it often happens with a beautiful golden autumn, it turned to be nasty grey thing with spraying rain and the sun nowhere to be seen.
We managed to catch quite a few non-rainy moments to do some more of our 6-7 hour walks (that is becoming a norm nowadays, if we walk just some 3 hours a day, I get the nagging sense of non-accomplishement that manifests itself (thats the worst!) through the feeling that I don't deserve a pizza for dinner... :).
We were quite impressed with the views of snowy peaks at the Mt Aspiring national park.
But the day after a layer of clowds brushed past the mountains around Wanaka and left equally impressive snowy mountain tops everywhere around us.
The tiny little black specks on the grass are cows (full bodied and much bigger than any cow I've seen in Europe), maybe it gives a better picture of the size of the mountains. Its difficult to comprehend the distances and sizes here. Everything seems to be within easy reach, tiny and cute, but may be enourmously big and tens of kilometers away.
We happened to go climb up the hill at the Diamond lake off Wanaka just during the 2 hour gap between drizzling and raining. Lucky us! It seems that so far we've been carrying good weather with us. (knock the wood, spit 3 times, etc..:)
After autumn in Wanaka we moved even further up towards winter at the Fox Glacier that descends down from the Mt Cook (the highest peak in the South Island) :)
Fox Glacier is famous, because it descends down all the way to the rainforest and somehow manages to sustain itself in pretty moderate temperature.
It is melting, of course, and there's a big river going down the valey, but there's enough snow up the mountain to keep it growing from the other end.
Here's more kiwi fashion for you. We're merging in nicely, don't you think? The crampons (or how do you spell them correctly?) besides being extremely comfortable to wear on ice, was a pretty cool fashion accessoir as well, don't you think?
Our guide was wearing a T-shirt all the way (out of 7 hours walking we spent about 4hours on ice) and we saw other guides in shorts. Excellent (the first "e" you should pronounce like in Finnish "Teemu" or Lithuanian "bega", thats proper Kiwi accent for you)!
Couple of times we had to push ourselves through this kind of narrow gaps that I didn't like at all (thats all for fun, we didn't really need to go there). Its always either hips or shoulders that get stuck in the gap and then you start feeling your butt melting the ice around it. Tiny frezing waterfalls down your legs.. brrr...
I think overall the walk was quite impressive, but Kaj said that its hard to impress him with snow and ice, him being a Finn.. :)
I bet they don't have this kind of ice tunnel in Lapland.. :)
After 7 hours walking we were pretty happy to get off the ice. And we were even more happy to leave the glaciers because of a horrible backpackers hostel that we were staying in. Now we're even more happy on the sunny and warm West Coast in a beautiful place where we had a SAUNA. It was my first sauna in almost 2 years and it felt fantastic, even though it was not quite proper in a strictly Finnish way. We're having a sauna tomorrow again! And here's some more happy moments from Wanaka:
