Icebergs!

We had a very nice dinner in The Panorama Room at The Hermitage. The views were amazing. The hotel is huge and the focal point for activities in Aoraki Mount Cook.
After a very good night’s sleep for it is very quiet here, we had our first self catered breakfast of the holiday, porridge, which we thought was a good choice for the activities we had planned for today. It is suggested we should have several layers of clothing.
We had booked to go on the Glacier Explorers tour. We had to check in at the local Hermitage Hotel and I guess there were about forty of us. We piled on to a bus for a short ten minute drive where we were dropped off and then walked for about a mile to a lake where three open boats were waiting for us. The lake is bout five kilometres long and has only been in existence for the past thirty years and is a result of glacier melting. On to our boat with an excellent guide, Amy, who first of all suggested we put our hand in the water which of course was freezing! Out on to the lake where there were a number of icebergs not huge as we know of in Antarctica but only a tenth of the size of them is above water and they can move and break up or tip over at any time so need to be treated with respect. There were lumps of them floating on the surface of the lake that Amy lifted out for us to hold. Quite extraordinary for they are crystal like. Amy then took us right up to an iceberg for us to touch and break off parts in our hand.
We then moved on to the other end of the lake to the glacier. It is about forty metres high but has a depth beneath the water level of over 200 metres. Pieces break off the glacier at any time to create new icebergs so you don’t go too close.
The landscape here is remarkable for we are in a valley with hills and mountains either side. It looks big but in reality is huge and you get an understanding of this when you look out and see a car or a helicopter and they are like pin pricks.
At the Hermitage Hotel there is a museum dedicated to the life of Sir Edmund Hillary who of course was the first man to climb Everest. Hillary was of course a Kiwi and did his training for the Everest climb here at Mount Cook which is the highest mountain in NZ at over 12,000 feet. There is a splendid sculpture of him looking out toward the mountain.
Despite having porridge for breakfast and recommending layers of clothing the weather today has been excellent with clear blue skies and temperatures of around 18 degrees.
In this area there are any number of walks and climbs ranging from serious mountaineering to more gentle walks the latter of which we did this afternoon and it was very pleasant offering great views over Mount Cook.
We leave here tomorrow and head south to Lake Wanaka but en route we have booked a thirty minute flight over the glacier which is subject to the weather being OK.Read more