Fancy a Little Shag? Bob's Cove.

It's time to start catching up on photos from the many hiking treks we did in New Zealand the past few weeks. Our first outing— not counting taking just a few steps from our luxurious hotel suite to enjoy the sunrise over Lake Wakatipu Tuesday morning— we headed around the opposite side of the lake toward Glenorchy. We were hoping the cloudy sky would clear up as we drove. Instead the opposite happened: the clouds grew thicker, and rain started.

We tried not to let the rain dampen our spirits too badly. We made a few short stops at the lake's edge to enjoy the scenery. Unfortunately we couldn't see much across the lake; clouds were so low in the sky (as it was raining) that the mountains on the far side were barely more than bright shadows. We did see a few birds.



This bird (above) is apparently called a Little Shag. It's a type of cormorant. We approached the bird carefully, cameras in hand, to see how close we could get without scaring it off. This particular bird seemed more pissed than scared by us. It gave us the stink eye several times.

We took a longer trek a bit further south at a place called Bob's Cove. A trail there leads down from a parking area to a quiet inlet on the lake, Bob's Cove, then around the cove to a mountainous spit of land separating it from the rest of the lake. Here's a video I shot from a jetty on the far side of Bob's Cove.

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In this video you can see how marvelously clear the water in the inlet is. I can easily make out details of the lake bed at least 20' down.

Past the jetty the trail starts climbing up. The narrow spit of land separating Bob's Cove from the main part of the lake is surprisingly steep. The climb's at least a few hundred feet of elevation gain. I huffed and puffed on the way up, criticizing myself for having such a hard time of it. It wasn't until we started down that I realized how much I'd climbed.



The photo above shows the view west and north from the hill separating the cove and the lake.



This photo's from a bit further down the hill. It shows the view north and east, out across Lake Wakatipu. The mountains on the far side are part of Fiordlands National Park. It's a very remote area. Though near face of the mountains are only several miles away, the drive to get to the other side of them— which we actually did a few days later— is hundreds of miles around from here.

Glenorchy and Lake Face Falls

On Tuesday (two weeks ago) on New Zealand's South Island we drove out from Queenstown to make what we could of the rainy day. Our plan had been to hike a mountainous trail but the weather boded against that. Still, we hiked a few miles around Bob's Cove in drizzling rain the whole time.

Further around the shores of the Lake Wakatipu we spotted on our maps a trail to Lake Face Falls. It was raining more heavily when we reached the trailhead so we decided to continue on (driving) and try again on the way back.

We reached the small town of Glenorchy at the end of the road. We figured we'd get lunch there. We figured if it was big enough to earn a dot on the map it'd have restaurants, right? Haha. It's such a small town that it has one general store that's basically everything: coffee shop, lunch counter, grocery, gift shop, and outdoor clothing store. Well, we were successful at getting lunch there. And we bought a memento, a hand-knotted wool sheep pillow. And we shopped outdoors clothes. Hawk and I were interested in better rain jackets but didn't find anything in our size/price range. Hawk did buy a wide-brimmed hat to help keep the rain off her face. (I already had one, which is how she got the idea to buy one.)

We drove out to a park at the foot of Lake Wakatipu to see if the rain would pass, but it didn't. What would we have done if it was clearer? Well, just north of Glenorchy is an interesting glacial valley. There's a mountain in the middle of the valley. Basically a glacier split around a small mountain and rejoined on the other side. It was the subject of many of the prints and art at the general store and makes a great view— when you can see it.

As we headed back toward home we stopped again at Lake Face Falls. It was still raining, but we decided to hike it anyway. It was a matter of "Do it in the rain or don't do it at all."



One upside of the rain today is that the falls were full. They looked very compelling to visit. Plus, the rain wasn't that bad. Until it started raining harder. 😂

Oh, but don't let the telephoto picture above fool you. It's easy to focus on the falls, but they're also kind of far away. Here's another photo from as we crossed the road to begin the trail:



The trail led uphill through tall grass and bushes. The trail was wildly overgrown, as we were warned by postings on hiker social media sites. We weren't too worried as we were wearing long pants and long sleeves anyway. But pushing through the brush and tall grass amplified how wet we got. Within minutes our clothes were drenched. And then the trail got even more overgrown.



The trail went from "cuts through tall grass and bushes" to "Duck under this thicket to follow the trail." We could tell we were close, and reasoned "In for a penny, in for a pound."

On the other side of the thicket we broke out onto a view of the lowest part of the falls.



These lower falls are a nice view. We could barely make out the bottom of the big falls in the distance up the ravine. We could not see the tall part of the falls at all.

From here a narrow footpath continues up the ravine. It's fairly steep, though, and with all today's rain quite slippery. Hawk decided to wait at the bottom while I scouted ahead to see how passable it was and if it yielded more views. I never got to the views as the trail was too slippery with mud on steep hillsides. We turned around and headed back toward the car.

Once at the car we changed out of our soaked clothes as much as we could. Some of the quick-drying materials aired out nicely by the time we got back to the hotel. Everything else we spread out across the suite's ample space to dry as we headed over to the hotel's pool area for a soak in the hot tub. Yes, we were already soaked, but this would be a pleasantly warm soak!

Purakaunui Falls

Two weeks ago Wednesday was a busy day for us in New Zealand. A second day of rain rained out our plans to go hiking in the mountains near Queenstown— again— but over breakfast we called an audible: we'd drive to a different part of the island and visit four waterfalls. Then in addition to hiking four falls I drove over 500 km. Like I said, it was a busy day.

Our first hike of the day started easily enough. The trail for Purakaunui Falls seemed pretty remote, but once we were there it was well signed, and a half dozen other small families were there, too. We proceeded down the well marked and well maintained path, past a small falls, then steeply down several flights of wooden stairs, to a viewing platform beneath Purakaunui Falls.



Because it was a short hike I carried along all my camera gear. That meant I carried my whole camera bag including a pouch of lens filters plus my folding tripod. Thus after an "ussie" with my iPhone, above, I set up the tripod, screwed on a circular polarizer, and had fun with motion blur pictures of the falling water.



Setting up the camera on the tripod means I can also compose the picture, getting the settings the way I want them, and turn it over to someone else to press the shutter button. ...Meaning I can be in my own picture:



Hawk and I took turns snapping pictures of each other walking out on the rocks near the falls.