coast, our first stop was Punakaiki, where we
saw the famous Pancake Rocks. Let's see if I
can get the photo of the rocks up here next to
the text, hmmm....The photo is low resolution
and you can't really see how strange and
wonderful the rocks are, but oh well.
Okay, that worked. The next photo is one everyone takes--if the weather is clear. Near the town of Fox Glacier is a lovely little lake, Lake Matheson, and it serves as a mirror for Mounts Tasman and Cook/Aoraki (highest mountain in the country, a bit over 12,000 feet). It was a lovely sunny morning and we went for breakfast to a cafe with clear mountain views that is near the lake, had the place to ourselves for a half hour or so eating our kiwi breakfast and drinking a flat white, then walked around the lake. Soon we were joined by a busload of Japanese tourists in dress-up clothes. They were in a rush, we meandered along the path and took a lot of photos of the lake--and a couple photos of them as well. It's about an hour's walk around the lake, but we stopped often. As we finally finished our circumambulation, we saw a tomtit for the first time, very small flycatcher with a black head like our phoebe, quite a bit smaller though. Birds seem to come much closer to us here, don't have the fear of predators that birds in our environment do. Trouble is that now there ARE predators here, introduced by people.
We went to see the Fox Glacier later in the morning. We had heard something about NZ glaciers advancing recently, but clearly they are overall receding. There were markers along the road showing where the terminal face of the glacier was in 1780, 1850, 1930, etc, and it was WAYY further downstream than now, miles. Lots of big seracs on this glacier, because of the shape of the underlying rock and the steep, curvy canyon it comes down. The Franz Josef, a bit north, is more smooth on top as a result of being in a wider canyon. If you've never seen a glacier, these are definitely interesting. I was more interested in the red lichen growing on the boulders and the waterfalls coming down through the rainforest in the approach to the ice face.
The lower photo has John really out of focus but it gives you and idea of the wealth of plants that exist in the
coastal rainforest. So many mosses, lichens,
liverworts, ferns, epiphytes, fungi and slime molds,
everywhere, covering all the rocks and all the tree
trunks. And that's it for now. Sorry all the photos are
on the same side of the page.
2 comments:
If you click on the pancake picture to get the full resolution, the striations in the rocks show up really well. Its a nice photo.
Lake Mathieson really is a place to linger and be still. Not an easy concept for most Japanese tourists it seems. They tend to be a source of amusement, esp when oggling sheep or being tormented by keas. Your photo captures the stillness and the steepness quite nicely. The peaks in the background are Mt Tasman and Mt Cook.
The photo in the bush is a bit out of focus. I take a lot of pictures in similar conditions. Digital cameras struggle with the lighting conditions - low light with bright mottled patches. Flashes dont work well either from a distance or close up so the cameras compensate by increasing the exposure time. Without a tripod, its just impossible not to get camera shake. Even image stabilisation doesnt work for those long exposures.
Yeah, I've had a lot of problems with camera shake, even when there seems to be adequate light. But there you go, trade-offs. The thing fits in my pocket!
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