Yesterday, Johanna and I drove through the Matukituki Valley to Mt. Aspiring National Park, which is a stunning 50km drive out of Wanaka (with only the last 20 or so kilometers on gravel road!). Even though the clouds had descended by the time we got on the road–about 1.30pm–the scenery, which was carved out of the land by the great Matukituki and Wanaka glaciers thousands of years ago, was still amazing. On the way, we stopped by Lake Wanaka and Glendhu Bay, a small offshoot of the lake, and got some great shots of puffy clouds and dark blue waves. I would have been happy with just seeing what I saw on the drive, really!

When we finally made it to Mt. Aspiring National Park, we were confronted with a series of fords starting 6km before the Raspberry Creek car park, where the Rob Rob Track started. We thought it might be a short distance and considered walking it, since Johanna’s car is so low-slung, but thought the better of it after being told how far it was and seeing many other low cars make it through safely.

It’s fortunate we did drive to the car park, because otherwise we would have never made it to the track at all, given the weather. It started spitting rain as soon as we got out of the car; by the time we were at the swing bridge–15 minutes into the track–it turned into a steady rain that beat down on us for the rest of the walk. The walk itself wasn’t too difficult–a little bit of uphill, but nothing too tiring–and fortunately most of it was covered by trees, so we didn’t get all that wet until we came out above the bushline for the last 10 minutes before the viewpoint. It took us a bit longer than it should have because I kept stopping and waiting for Johanna, who isn’t quite as in shape as numerous tracks have made me.

The view at the top would have been absolutely spectacular…if it hadn’t been cloudy and pouring. We could just barely see the section of the Rob Roy glacier that is precariously perched on the edge of a mountain, and we could see two white spots that marked other sections of the glacier as well. Still, it was a great sight, especially the numerous waterfalls pouring from the packed ice. There had to be at least 50 of them pouring from all different heights. Some poured water that seemed to completely disappear into clouds underneath. Others fed into the Rob Roy stream that ran next to much of the track, turning it from blue to a raging grey. Probably the coolest view was towards the end of the walk, when we saw the West Matukituki River join with the Rob Roy stream; one was brilliantly blue, the other grey. Unfortunately, the silty grey won.

The exhaustion that set in after walking for 3.5 hours in the rain didn’t go away even after a good night’s sleep, so I’m lucky it’s a lazy day. Johanna drove me to Queenstown, where it is raining and clouds are down over the Remarkables. A perfect day for taking naps, uploading pictures, and making DVDs of the thousands of pictures I’ve taken so far. I haven’t gotten to uploading Rob Roy shots, which explains the lack of illustration in this entry, but I have added shots from Puzzling World to my Wanaka album and I have updated my Copland Track album with most of the shots I took while walking. Here’s an interesting contrast of Shiels Creek shots (one from the day I walked in and one from the next day), to show why we couldn’t cross it for quite a while:

Also, I’ve added one of the videos that Rob, my tandem paragliding guide, took while in flight. Watch it below!