Day 6 – South Island Tour – 3rd March 2010

Sorry these are out of order!

 

Got up this morning at 6:15am to depart Dunedin at 8:00am for yet another long drive to Mount Cook. More blue skies and sunshine. We set off north along the coast on highway 1 or route 1 or whatever the 1 road is called.

We stopped to see the Moeraki Boulders on the beach. I have hidden a photo on this page. These really are odd things. You would assume they were large lumps of rock that had been washed back and forth on the sea bed to form these spherical shapes but seemingly that is not the case and they are harder rocks from the small beach cliff that are undermined by the sea. Apparently there are many others in the softer cliff waiting to be revealed by time and tide.

We continued north on “The One” up to Oamaru and had another stop in White Stone City as it is sometimes called. This is from the local rock they quarry and made a lot of the buildings from it. Makes the buildings look quite elegant. We had an hour there to get a bite to eat and a cappuccino and then had a mooch about. Stopped in to see an old-style bookbinder. Shortly after leaving Oamaru we turned inland on the 83 and drove up through Dunntroon, Kurow, Aviemore and Otematata (where we made a detour to take a look at the big Hydro-electric power station and dam that created Lake Benmore) before stopping for another break at Omarama. We then drove the final 87Km to Mount Cook, passing through Twizel and driving alongside Lake Pukaki.

As before, the drive takes you through the most beautiful scenery. Rolling landscapes, farmlands, paddocks filled with sheep and cattle and then as you once again near the mountains it changes again into the now familiar alpine contours. It is very hard not to keep wanting to take the camera out and shoot another lake, river, bridge, mountain or vast rolling valley. We witnessed the changing face of parts of New Zealand where high plateaus that were once dry and barren and would only support Merino sheep were now being extensively watered and turned into farmland and cattle replacing sheep. The many and various watering systems were easily seen from the coach. The most impressive were the vast linear arrays of watering machines that were computer controlled and inched their way across wide fields, the watering gantry fully occupying the width of the field. The contrast between watered and unwatered fields was strikingly obvious.

So, here we are at the Hermitage Hotel in the Mount Cook National Park. It didn’t look much as we approached it but it is great. Very modern and spacious and comfortable. The room is up to the usual quality of any other hotel. There is Internet access in reception and also Wifi but nothing in the room so I will not post this until we get back to the Copthorne in Christchurch tomorrow.

We have just returned to the room from visiting the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre at the Hermitage. Sir Ed spent a lot of time in this area, climbing Mount Cook and preparing for his conquest of Everest. A lot of his gear is here and there is an attached Cinema and Planetarium. We went to four shows. The first was a Mount Cook 3D Movie which meant I didn’t need to climb the mountain myself as I have now seen it; well, virtually. The other three were all using the Planetarium Dome and were all about Black Holes, mapping the Universe (a somewhat challenging job creation scheme) and Space Travelling through the Solar System, our Galaxy and the rest of the Universe. Not a bad trip that, only took 20 minutes.