New Zealand is AMAZING. Absolutely pristine and exquisite. It's not hard to see why they chose it as the location for shooting Lord of the Rings - it has an almost other-worldly beauty and looks untouched except for an unobtrusive 2-lane road that you're on. We've seen so many gorgeous things just from the bus, but also yesterday did an hour-long walk around Lake Matheson that was absolutely gorgeous, and this morning some of us did a 3-hour hike up to, around, and back down from a glacier. I had, as my mother likes to say, put on ALL of my clothes since most of what I have is geared more towards an Australian summer than a New Zealand autumn (winter - it is COLD here). At one point I was wearing a t-shirt, long sleeved shirt, hooded sweatshirt, fleece and windbreaker, with a baseball cap and the hood of the sweatshirt tied over it. My hands and face were still cold, but at least my calves and feet were cozy from the huge woolen socks and thick heavy hiking boots they made us wear! One of my fellow tourists was kind enough to take a photo of me inside an ice cave and has promised to send it to me, so that was nice.
The people who didn't go on the hike did the heli-hike, which was a short helicopter ride up to a little further up on the glacier, an hour of wandering about, and then a helicopter ride down. I liked the full hike, even though my feet and ankles had taken a beating by the time I got back down to the bus. It's a unique environment in which a glacier lives peacefully alongside a temperate rainforest (read: BEAUTIFUL walk up - we walked through streams from waterfalls and wooded hillsides on either side of the glacier). I was also surprised to see moving water on the glacier, through cracks. Gorgeous.
Tomorrow's main activity will be hang gliding for me (other options are bungee jumping and sky diving and horseback riding - we're in Queenstown, adrenaline capital of the world where many crazy activities were invented).
1 comment:
hang gliding, Amy? Really? WOW
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