Dunedin, Mount Cook, and Lake Tekapo

Mount Cook. At 3,754 meters, it eats climbers on occasion.

After a few days of taking in the views of the remote beaches in the Catlins we headed north, back towards civilization. Our next stop was Dunedin, a city on the east coast. As we'd been roughing it for a few days we decided to recharge our batteries and take a hot shower, so we camped at the local RV park.

We headed to the city's museum, where Amy and Amelia found some nifty outfits. They toured the museum dressed like this:

My girls, dressed as settlers. Fetching, eh?


During our stay in Dunedin we heard about a "castle" built by a local businessman about a hundred years back and we decided to check it out one afternoon. Back in the 19th century, the risk of invasion from medieval armies was small, so the castle was really more of a crenellated mansion. It was certainly worth visiting, though, as it had been built by local craftsmen and lovingly restored. The gardens, in particular, were amazing.

The gardens at the castle. Gardens do well here due to the nuclear-grade sunlight and mild temps.

Our next stop in Dunedin was the impressive Otago Museum (Otago is the name of the region). Part of the museum housed a multistory rainforest environment complete with a swarm of butterflies which delighted the kids and left Amy ducking for cover.

Apparently fear of flying insects isn't genetic; I won't be surprised if this gal turns out to be an entomologist.

The fossil exhibit at the Otago museum was the highlight for me; there were moa bones (remember those huge, flightless birds hunted to extinction by the Maori?) found in local caves as well as NZ's largest fossil, a really aggressive looking aquatic animal with big teeth. The kids got a big kick out of the lifelike crocodile on the museum floor.

Quinn, enthusiastically demonstrating how a crocodile goes "snap!"

We left Dunedin and soon came across the Moeraki boulders, a bunch of unusually spherical boulders which formed about 65 million years ago. These boulders started out on the muddy sea floor as small crystals of lime with a bit of an electical charge; over about 4 million years they slowly attracted other minerals in spherical layers. The sea floor was eventually pushed up above the water's surface and you can now see boulders being eroded out of the side of the hills near the ocean. Most of these are about 8 feet wide. It's really a neat sight.

Notice the shattered boulders in the background, they are all essentially hollow.


Our next stop was Oamaru (Wa-ma-roo). This was a tiny town on the coast that really caught us by surprise. The town was built from local limestone and it featured one of the best gardens we'd come across in NZ (that's saying a lot). We were camped right next to the gardens and had a nice time walking through there, though I didn't take too many pics. Here's Quinn enjoying himself at the garden playgrounds:

My little bald man. He would later begin referring to slides as "weeee!" for obvious reasons.

Another neat thing in Oamaru was a local blue penguin colony. We bought tickets to the nightly show; people sit in bleachers and watch the penguins swim ashore while listening to park rangers talk about the cute little things. They swim up to 50km a day and return to that spot to feed their young. The chicks practically attack their parents as soon as they waddle ashore, exhausted.

Around this time Amelia developed a fascination with marriage, asking me and Amy about our wedding nonstop for about 3 days. She got a huge kick out of playing the bride, and we fashioned a veil for her from a napkin. She wore this for most of the day.

My girls on Amelia's first wedding day.

From Oamaru we headed inland, almost all the way across the island. Our destination was Mount Cook, the tallest peak in the country. On the way there we passed a lake saturated with minerals, resulting in a deep blue color that defied the imagination.

I was mobbed by sandflies while taking this pic, so I hope you enjoy it.

We had debated whether or not it would be worth the detour towards Mt. Cook, and we ended up being very happy that we decided to do it. The area was one of the most impressive we visited during our trip. The base camp was located on flat ground (carved out by glaciers, of course) and surrounded by incredible mountains. The mountains, incidentally, were part of the same range as those containing the Fox and Franz-Joseph glaciers which we'd seen whilst traveling down the west coast weeks earlier.

I don't know if it made international news or not, but two Japanese climbers were caught in a storm on Mt. Cook about a week before we arrived. Sadly, one of them didn't make it down. This isn't unheard of as it's a popular climbing destination and it's also a serious peak. Our babysitter, Kirsty, told us that her dad has climbed it a few times (she declined his offer to join him).

Amy and Quinn in front of a glacier-covered mountain range near Mt. Cook. They are standing on a huge lateral moraine which is basically a big pile of rocks deposited by a glacier. You can see other huge moraines in the background.

Me and my girl in front of Mt. Cook. Note the U-shaped valley; if you've paid attention then you'll know how that got there.

We stayed here for two days and we really couldn't get enough of the area. There were lots of day hikes in the area and we found one with two swing bridges over roaring rapids which led to great views of Mt. Cook. This was our favorite hike in NZ (there are better ones, but not the sort of thing to do with two toddlers).

A view looking away from Mt. Cook. The valley was truly stunning.

We had been rained out weeks earlier when we tried to visit Fox glacier, but we managed to get our fill of glaciers in the few days we camped here. The glaciers were in constant motion and you could hear them popping and cracking. It sounded like thunder echoing through the valleys. Amy woke up one night to the rumbling and thought that a landslide was going to hit us.

Family pic! Happy about it, Amelia?

A close-up of the crevasses formed as the glacier moves over the rock.

The girls playing in front of Mt. Cook.

The kids amused themselves that evening by playing house with a bunch of rocks. Yes, Quinn later managed to pull the house down on himself but avoided serious injury.


Our next stop was Lake Tekapo, renowned for the cute little stone church built on the edge of a gorgeous lake. The water here was an amazing shade of blue and the trout in the lake were gigantic.

Quinn points out the church, just visible on the peninsula.

The church itself is tiny but picturesque as it's constructed from uncut local stones and situated so that the view out of it's altar window is really pleasing to the eye (sorry, running out of synonyms for "beautiful" again).

The view from in front of the church.

Amy and the kids playing in a field in front of the church, with the clouds just starting to cover the mountains in the background.

We left Lake Tekapo with mixed feelings because we knew that the end of our journey was near. It was exciting to think about living in a house again, but Amy and I both loved spending so much time together as a family. It certainly was a challenge at times, but it was worth all of the effort.

Here's one of the last pictures taken on the trip. This was the nightly routine; we bought the books on sale in a small-town library and read them to the light of headlamps.