January 4, 2024
I can attribute the title of this email (Head in the clouds…) to many things.
First, in case you hadn’t noticed, I am on the trip of a lifetime [granted, I have been lucky enough to be on many of these…]. Just over halfway through and we are still both loving the adventures, each other, the discoveries, even the occasional mundanity of constant travel.
On that note, New Year’s Day arrived with 40 mph winds which dampened our spirits for discovering more about the tippy-bottom of New Zealand. Having packed all our gear in the car to get on the road relatively early, I left packing our map and itinerary for last…And behold, a miracle! We were not due at our next abode until the next day. It gave us a day of vacation from our vacation.
New Year’s Day was as sedentary as we could make it, amassing a mere 346 steps that day (vs our daily average on this trip of 7,000 steps). The 346 steps occurred only because we went out for dinner to Buster Crabb’s, a favorite Invercargill restaurant named after a famous spy who supposedly inspired Ian Fleming’s 007 series. Shaken, not stirred.
We began our trek north on Jan. 2. In our 3 hour drive we passed through lush, hilly green pastures filled with cows and sheep, flatlands turned over to large farms, rocky gorgeous gorges, and crossed and recrossed more rivers than we could count. We arrived at our “humble abode” as it was described in the Airbnb description. It fit the bill, and it had a (working) washing machine and a comfortable bed. Good stuff for us.
“My” day. Lots of wines in beautiful spots. Nick “put up” with it quite well!
The next day was “my” day…Having seen every mode of transportation offered in every museum in Invercargill, Nick (not really begrudgingly) agreed to a day of wine tasting in the Central Otago region which is backed by the Alps on the west side and verdant farmlands heading towards the east coast. Not surprisingly, the day played out like a California wine tasting day.
One of the lookouts on our way to Mount Cook, which, as it turns out, was just around the corner…
Perfect weather, knowledgeable wine makers….but the clientele was far more international. That said, our favorite was Aiken’s Folley, a small winery with a tiny tasting room. The winemaker/owner, ex-geologist, had emigrated with his wife, also an ex-geologist, from England to make wine…hence the name. As it turns out, he has a knack for it, and we particularly enjoyed his Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs and his stories. The only other couple with their 15-year-old son that came in was, surprisingly, American. However, he works for the foreign service and they flew in from Beijing. Their son had lived in 6 countries in his short life…but not the U.S.
We were determined to see Mt. Cook, the tallest peak in New Zealand. Doing so meant a day of driving including a mountain pass, which topped out at a mere 3200 ft., a baby by California standards. But the drive dipped us into long straight valleys and over glacial rivers. Turning a corner, there was the mountain surrounded by its mountain buddies and well-clad in a jacket of snow.
L: Nick is testing out his new hiking boots that he will be wearing in less than two weeks on the Milford Track. He took a longer trail than I did to see the Tasman Glacier that flows into the Tasman Lake. Middle: Tasman Glacier…It is flowing into the Tasman Lake. Note the scree rock on top of the glacier. If you look carefully, you can catch an iceberg or two next to the face of the glacier at water’s edge. R:
I took a lesser trail but was visited by the cutest cloud ever.
Topping the mountain was a UFO…or what has been, in the past, attributed to being an alien spaceship. Intrigued, I snapped a photo and at the visitor center found the explanation: a hogs back or lenticular cloud formation. According to the National Weather Service: [https://www.weather.gov/abq/features_acsl#:~:text=You%20have%20no%20doubt%20seen,and%20why%20do%20they%20form%3F]
“Known as Altocumulus Standing Lenticular (ACSL) or Altocumulus Standing Lenticularis clouds, they are associated with waves in the atmosphere that develop when relatively stable, fast moving air is forced up and over a topographic barrier that is oriented more or less perpendicular to the direction from which the upper-level wind is blowing.”
In short, Mt. Cook created its own cloud. Very, very cool…UFO quality…super cool.
Typical landscape and cloudscape in and around the Southern Alps.
Tomorrow we head towards the east coast…which is the Pacific Ocean (as opposed to the west coast which is the Tasman Sea). That just doesn’t compute to a California girl. By Sunday, we will arrive in Christchurch to stay with niece Tess and her husband Sam, plus Nick’s brother Gordo who has flown in from Auckland. By Tuesday, Nick’s brother Mark will have arrived from Portland and the next part of our journey commences.
~Wendy and Nick