Sharman's sister Lesley is here for two weeks and we have filled her days with adventures near Dunedin (within a day's drive). Of course, that means that we could cross the South Island of New Zealand. A more expansive post on her visit is forthcoming but I will share some of the varied landcapes that we covered as we travelled from the Southern Alps on the western South Island to the East Coast this weekend. It is an impressive, highly compressed transect from alpine to ocean. We hiked through beech forests in Mt. Aspiring National Park to the cliff below the Rob Roy Glacier. For most of the hike we climbed out of the bottom of a deep glacier-carved valley adjacent to the melt-water of the Rob Roy Glacier. Then we emerged into a small clearing that provided panoramic views of the three massive lobes of the glacier and the dozen waterfalls cascading off the cliffs of the falls.
We didn't ever hike out of the beech zone and into the alpine but, fortunately, when we drove from Queenstown to Wanaka, we travelled over a pass that put us in the snow tussock zone--the grassland system that I'm doing research on while in Dunedin. These massive tussock grasses are found above treeline but below the true alpine where it is too cold and windy for upright plants to surive. I find them the most photogenic grasses I've ever seen.
After driving for 3 1/2 hours, we reached the East Coast, just 75 minutes north of Dunedin. Here we visited the Moeraki Boulders, a quirky geological phenomenon. They are big, sperical concretions that were buried in ancient mudstone that have been slowly exposed by waves along the sea. The more romantic, Maori view is that they are the remains of eel baskets, kumera, and calabash from the wreckage of a large sailing waka. This weekend shows just how blessed we are to live in this little corner of God's Creation for a season.