After saying goodbye to our kind hosts, Marj & Murray, and our fellow guests we headed roughly north. We want to see the area around Mount Cook and possibly do a hike. We figured we’d look at Omarama, check out the weather and make a decision there.
The road out of Alexandra soon took us past Clyde and along the Dunstan Lake formed by the dam at Clyde which we’d visited the day before. The lake behind the dam was a milky blue caused (we learned earlier on this trip) by tiny particles of mica floating in the water. We followed the lake for around 10 miles before gradually climbing into the mountains via the Lindis Pass.
The mountains through which we were passing were dry and barren, quite unlike those further to the west which presumably precipitated most of the rain fall. They had their own kind of beauty and we very much enjoyed the drive.
Soon we were heading down again and reached Omarama around lunchtime. We checked out the Top 10 Campsite there and using the laptop logged in to check the weather for the Mt Cook area. No surprise, it wasn’t good for Monday onwards. Omarama was a bit of a cross roads steer town with enough going on (bar the best gliding in NZ) to last all the way through lunch. So that’s what we did before heading to the coast which had a better forecast.
Not too far from Omarama we saw a sign to the left pointing to Benmore Dam. We decided to have a look at that and were rewarded with some fine views of lakes, rivers and human engineering.
We were able to drive right over the dam and round the north side of Lake Aviemore. We rejoined the main road by passing over yet another dam – this time, the Aviemore Dam.
We were in fact driving down the valley formed by the Waitaki River all of which was the same milky blue as Lake Dunston near Clyde. We had one more lake and dam to pass, both named after the river, before the land leveled out to such an extent no more dams (I believe) were possible.
Along this section of the road we saw a sign to a spot where there were supposed to be some Maori Cave paintings. The whole rockface was a honeycomb of weathered features. We stopped to take a look but after a short walk we discovered the feature was closed due to a rock fall. The fall looked fresh and we wondered if it had been caused by the recent quakes/aftershocks in Christchurch.
Soon we were on the coast road and heading into Oamaru, famous for it’s penguin colonies. We checked out the Top 10 Campsite there and found it had old and cramped facilities and seemed crowded out by an old motorbike convention. The bikes looked interesting but the crowds didn’t appeal so we did a bit of research and found a backpackers a short way out of town with a vacancy.
We stopped off for some food and headed off to the backpackers. It turned out to be really nice. The room is small but the shared area is huge and comfortable. Better still, it has free internet. (Pics will upload soon).
We were done for the day. We had a few online things to catch up on and news to read so it was nice to rest and do that.
Today we will no doubt see the penguins and take a look at the round rocks nearby. The near term weather forecast for the Mount Cook area is still dismal. We’ll be keeping our eyes on this. We don’t want to miss this area but we’re beginning to feel the need to head back north and eventually get back onto the boat.
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