Hey Everyone!!
This weekend was another amazing weekend in New Zealand. I saw some of the prettiest things I have seen pretty much ever. We went to Mount Cook National Park and we saw Mount Cook and the Tasman Glacier. My roommate Courtney had been talking about how she wanted to see Mount Cook since we’ve been here. To be honest, I had never heard of Mount Cook and was just excited to go see a mountain and get some hiking in this weekend. Up until the day before we got here, I had been telling everyone we were going to go and climb Mount Cook. I was confused as to why everyone was so impressed with this because I thought it was just going to be an awesome mountain. As it turns out, Mount Cook is the training mountain for people wishing to climb Mount Everest. Needless to say, we were NOT going to climb the mountain, we were going to hike around it and look at it in all it’s glory. It truly is magnificent. There are hanging glaciers all over it. I can’t even believe how pretty it is! The Hermitage Hotel is one of the most famous hotels in New Zealand it’s the place where the Sir Edmund Hillary museum is located. We got some pictures with the guy out on the balcony of the hotel!
The first day we were there on Saturday, we went on an incredible tour called the Glacial Expedition. (If you’re ever in NZ, TAKE THIS TOUR!!!!) We went on a tour to the Tasman Glacier (largest glacier in New Zealand) and we got pretty up close and personal with it! It started out with a short bus ride to the car park for the glacier trek. This WHOLE valley used to be the Tasman Glacier during the Ice Age.
Then, we took a walk from the car park to the Tasman Lake. It was only a short 2km walk, but of course it provided us with some amazing views.
We made it to the Lake!! How pretty! The water is so blue and milky from all the glacial silt.
2 minutes after our boat took off, we were up close and personal with our first ice berg. Remember, only 10% of the iceberg is above the water. 90% of the ice berg is still under the water!! That’s a lot of ice!
After that ice berg, we went really REALLY close to another one! This one was bigger too.
The tour guide broke off little pieces of the iceberg and handed them to us! It was so cool and of course FREEZING! We held them up to the sun and they looked like diamonds. When we were too cold to hold the ice bergs anymore, we asked the guide what to do with the chunk of ice, is it appropriate to throw it back?? She said “You eat it of course!!” So yes, I ate a little bit of a glacier. It was so cool!!
I know these ice bergs look dirty, but they’re not! It’s just the stuff from the inside of the glacier turning over and coming out to the surface. It’s a complicated process, but the water in the top 10% of the lake is too warm (2 degrees Celcius) so it melts a bit of the glacier. Because of this, it is forced to turn itself inside out for some reason to regain the 10-90 ratio for being in and out of the water. Interesting! I thought they were just dirty.
At last, we got to see the Tasman glacier! We weren’t able to get too close because the 90% of this glacier that is underwater has created a shelf and if we got any closer, we’d eventually get stuck and be unable to get back out. It really is a beautiful glacier!! It’s been around since the ice age! This thing is super old! I wonder if the animals from the movie ice age were on this glacier??
Here are just a few more beautiful pictures from the tour on the Tasman Glacial Lake. Absolutely incredible.
Here are a couple amazing photos from the view from our room in the hostel.
We went on a hike called the Hooker Valley Trail and it was sweet. It took us about 2 hours and 20 minutes round trip and it was a relatively difficult track. We definitely were breathing hard at certain parts on it. It was absolutely worth it though because of the view!!! I am going to put so many pictures on here, sorry!!
Here's the start of our 3 hour hike!
The first bridge we had to get over! Very shaky.
This should be framed!
Just taking a break from the hiking for a photo opp!
Our first real good glimpse of Mount Cook
We finally made it to the Hooker Valley Glacier! It was so cool (literally cold) and ridiculously windy. We were getting blown around so we weren’t able to stay very long! We would have blown away. Mount Cook was beautiful from this view and the glacier was amazing as well. What a special place.
I was being blown right over! SOOO Windy!
We stopped at the glorious Lake Tekapo on our way back home! These pictures don’t do it justice!! The water was SO clear and so aqua blue. Beautiful. :) I loved how the flowers came right out of the rocks. It seemed like such a contradiction. It was an incredible sight. I cannot wait to frame all of these pictures so I can remember this beauty forever! While we were there, we decided to go to the famous Lake Tekapo hot pools. They were like huge hot tubs that you could swim around in. It was so relaxing, I loved it!
