Copland Track

We completed a 2 day, 36k (22 mile) hike on a trail called the Copland Track.  We loved doing this hike because it was a good challenge for us, the scenery was beautiful and untouched, the river was so clean we were able to drink from it, there were some thermal pools at the end of it that were the best reward after a long 8 hour day of trekking, the hut we stayed in overnight was really nice, and we made friends with some German and French travelers who were staying at the hut with us.  It was a beautiful sunny day on our first day, and we had lunch next to a beautiful turquoise freezing cold river.  The second day was very wet and rainy, and we had a lot of deep rushing streams to cross.  We were soaked from head to toe for the entire 18k back to our car.  It was overall a unique experience. 

There were two scary swing bridges like this one on the hike.  You can see from the picture that there were 4 cables that served a walkway, which made for a bouncy, swinging crossing.  We had to cross one at a time, and it took a few minutes to get all the way across.  It was fun!  

Ice Climbing

We went ice climbing on the Fox Glacier.  It was a unique experience, it’s not everyday you get to do something like that.

I loved seeing the glacier so up close, actually getting to be on it and explore, rather than just looking at it from a distance. 

Walking around on a glacier was pretty cool, and climbing it was even better. 

There was a pale blue tint to the ice and you could see and hear the trickling of the melting water run-off.  We had to be careful not to fall into any of the holes in the ice because they were so deep that when you tried to look down them, you couldn’t even see the bottom. 

A cave that had formed in the glacier

We learned pretty quickly, and were climbing some challenging stuff by the end of the day.  Here's Jeff at the top of his climb.

using an ice pic is fun!

A shallow pool of melted glacier water that had been colored by some of the minerals in the glacier.... pretty amazing

The glacier from farther away.  It looks pretty dirty!

New Zealand- South Island

There was this pretty cool low lying fog over the lake that we camped by, which we woke up to one morning and we had to get a picture of.  It's pretty hard for us not to take a picture of almost everything we see in New Zealand because everywhere you look is some picturesque scene.  It's so common here that you start to take it for granted after a while.

The water here is so amazingly clean and clear.  And it's so reflective, that you can see the mountains more clearly in the reflection than when you actually look directly at the mountains. 

There are these alpine parrots called Keas that are really interesting (or cheeky as they say here).  They are pretty large birds, and 2 of them ran up to us, jumped on our car, and tried to bite it everywhere they could.  I thought it was crazy enough that there are parrots that live in snowy, cold, mountainous areas, and even crazier that they were attacking our car.

 the Milford Sound

We took a cruise through the Milford Sound and saw lots of steep, jagged, snow topped mountains jutting out from the water.

From the boat, we saw a big group of New Zealand fur seals napping on the rocks.

We were so amazed at the light blue color of the water, and the ice bergs and glaciers at Mt Cook National Park.

you can see some of the icebergs floating in the background

probably not a good idea to try to ride an iceberg

This is the type of view we see from the car quite often as we drive around the south island.

 Lake Tekapo