Fancy a Little Shag? Bob's Cove.
Apr. 25th, 2024 07:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerIt'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.
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.
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.
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.
