Days 35-36: Mt Cook

More driving today. We went all the way back up to Mount Cook, but this time on the interior side of mountain range, probably only 40 kilometers from Fox Glacier. Other than helicopter, there aren’t any shortcuts from one side of the range to the other though – you have to drive at least 400 kilometers to get from one side to the other, due to the paucity of drivable passes through the mountains.

Part of the drive was backtracking (the first we’ve done in NZ) to Queenstown, but the remainder was new. We passed by High Country Salmon and bought a pound and a half of fresh salmon for $8! Boy did that grill up nicely! We hiked down to the beautiful turquoise waters of Lake Pukaki and went for a swim. Apparently the color is caused by minerals in the sediment, leftovers from the glaciers that carved it out. Mount Cook provides an amazing backdrop, with it snow gleaming and glaciers beckoning.

The next day we went up to the Tasman Glacier, hiked (and swam) around the Blue Lakes (which really should be called the Green Ponds), then down to Tasman Lake, which is filled with icebergs calved from the glacier, and through the moraine. Tasman Glacier is much flatter than even Fox Glacier, but even bigger. A very large portion of it is covered in dirt and rock, making it less impressive, but apparently the ice is 200 meters deep! It was quite warm despite the altitude, and nearly desert level dryness in the valley, much to our surprise. The views up to Mount Cook and the surrounding peaks were pretty amazing, it’d be fun to do some real climbing in the area.