Mount Cook to Kurow

Saturday morning there was just a light drizzle so we drove up another unsealed, gravelly road for about 8 km to see the Blue Lakes and Tasman Glacier. The blue lakes were described in the leaflet as now being green ponds and that was true - we saw 3, the first one being the biggest pond with a reddy-brown leafy growth around the edges of it ( I have yet to look up what this is). The third one was completely dried up so we didn't look any further. The Tasman Glacier, where they do tourist boat trips for $145 a head so you can see and touch the floating icebergs, was the largest glacier lake we saw and we had a great view of it from the elevated walk. I imagine the glacier wall would be quite impressive if you were in a boat looking up at it. We could see a lot of floating icebergs in the water (and saved ourselves $290!)

Tasman Glacier & Lake

A cafe in Twizel was our lunch stop before driving on to the free DOC camp at the Ahuriri Bridge 3 km out of Omarama. There was some light rain during the night before it became heavy around 6.00am and when we pulled the curtains some time later there were huge brown puddles everywhere amongst the muddy ground. We felt quite pleased that not only were we not in a tent but that we didn't get stuck.

The carpark in Omarama was also almost submerged in water and we felt rather disappointed that we weren't going to get the expected beautiful view of all the lakes that we were about to drive past on our gradual way to Oamaru. However soon after we left the carpark the sky started to clear and we ended up with a sunny warm day and perfect views of Lake Benmore, Aviemore and Waitaki. We drove up to the power station dam at Benmore which is the second largest hydro station in NZ - there is more water held back by the dam than is in the Wellington harbour which is pretty impressive. After having lunch at Sailors Cutting where there is a busy campsite and loads of boats waiting to launch onto the lake we also saw the other hydro dams at Lakes Aviemore and Waitaki. It is a very picturesque drive, the low cloud and sun contributing to this. There are also quite a lot of campsites but we decided to head on to Kurow which is about 55km west of Oamaru and spend 2 nights here to be settled somewhere for New Years Eve - shouldn't be too noisy here?!

A street scene in Kurow!

Kurow from the hill walkway

The friendly camp lady told us 3 walks we could do - along the river, into the village and up the big hill on the other side of the road for a great view. We had them all done in 2 hours and that included eating some little yellow plums from a tree near the river and having a large icecream in the village which has a junk shop in desperate need of Len's decluttering skills - rubbish, dust, dead flies, you name it! Not to be confused with the clean, organised one just along the road. We met lots of chatty people on the walk up the hill who are also staying in the campground so maybe we'll know someone to have a drink with tomorrow night to see the New Year in, if we can stay awake that long! We have some young ones in tents beside us so that is a good possibility.