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NZ Meet-up Day (Monday, Feb 8)
Today started out cool and a bit drizzly in Christchurch and is ending with warm and sunny weather at Braemer Station (ranch to non-New Zealanders).
After getting ready for the day, Diana and I headed for a grocery store thinking we’d get some bananas or fruit and along the way take a picture of the place we had dinner last night. On the way, we found the Metro Cafe where we split a bowl of a bunch of fruit–better than just bananas! Quite a pleasant surprise.
Then we checked out of our hotel and headed five minutes down the road where we joined a group of folks headed out on the same Active Adventures tour as us. Shortly our chariot, uh, bus arrived along with our two guides for the trip, Katie and Kirsten. We found out the bus’s name is Bruce. 🙂
There are 12 of us on this southbound Rimu tour, plus our guides. First order of business was introductions all around. I don’t tend to remember names the first time around, but it’s a good start. I’ve gotten most of them by the end of the day.
Quite a bit of driving today, with our first stop in the small town of Geraldine for a very satisfying picnic lunch. Then we head south through some beautiful scenery toward a working sheep farm named Morelea. There we got a demonstration of the sheep shearing process, saw a sheep dog in action and got to visit with the sheep he rounded up. At the end of the visit, we had tea in the garden and then were on our way once again. I’ll reiterate what I said yesterday: everyone here is friendly! And this country is clean. All the buildings seem to be in good repair, even those undergoing renovation.
We passed Lake Tekapo, visiting a small church there and marveling at the color of the water–really blue! Same reason as the same color I saw in Canada. Glacier melt brings minerals into the water. Seems surreal, but beautiful!
After a lot of green and rolling hills, we turned west at the bottom of a range of hills into a desert-type of landscape. Because of the “southern Alps,” there’s a lot less water in this area, and here’s where we’re staying for two nights, at Braemer Station, in quarters originally set up for sheep shearers. And this is where we have a fabulous view of Mt. Cook, sitting beyond another gorgeous lake named Lake Pukaki..
The last picture is a close-up of Mt. Cook that was only possible because of my new 70-300 mm telephoto lens. That sucker is heavy, but with this picture, it suddenly seemed worth what it took to carry it here.
We have no internet access at this stop, so I’m writing this offline for a couple of nights. Once again, I think I’m the last one up so I can write this. Tomorrow morning we head to the other side of the lake and take our first hike of the trip. 400 meters up all steps. Then another 400 meters on a trail. I’m not carrying much, but once again we have to prepare for both warm and cold, both dry and drizzle, and certainly for wind. So more tomorrow on how that went!
