Three Hikes and a Long Drive - Day 13

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Today was a gruelling day.  Before every vacation Mary Ann and I always agree that it will not be a hiking vacation, it should be relaxing.... You know the saying, you can relax when your dead.

We were headed from Hokitika on the west coast down to Queenstown, with a few stops along the way.  It should have been a relaxing day, but...

Views like this happen... The drive into the mountains was beautiful.  I loved the hanging clouds, and the lines of the river and rapids.

The first stop was the Franz Josef Glacier.  Of course we wanted to hike it to get as close as possible.  The signs said the walking trail was open, and that we could walk to 750 metres from the terminus of the glacier.  

This was taken about half way into our hike.  We could see the glacier, but we were still a long way from it.

We finally reached the end of the trail.  About an hour to get there, about 2 km but mostly uphill.  The good news is that the walk out was mostly downhill (it still took another hour to walk out).

Here is Christopher's Christmas Card photo.

The second stop was Lake Matheson.  It is a small lake with tremendous views of Mount Cook (right) and Mount Tasman (left).

Pretty spectacular...  There is a hiking trail around the lake.  The whole circuit was 4.4 kilometres and took about 2 hours.  And this wasn't supposed to be a hiking holiday!

The third stop was a bit of a surprise.  I had read something about the Blue Pools, but wasn't sure about finding them.  As it turned out, they were only and a 15 minute walk in from the highway at Haast Pass. Another 1.5 km again downhill going uphill coming back.  Oh my aching feet! ( MA's comment.)

Photo courtesy of Mary Ann.

Of course there were other photo opps along the way.

Lake Wanaka just after the sun sank behind the mountains.  The colours and reflections were amazing.

Tomorrow is a fun day around Queenstown. Stay tuned.

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Thanks for reading...

Mark