The weather is still awesome, another 31 degrees today, I just long for a normal 24 degrees! And then I feel bad because when it is -2 here again all day in Winter I am going to be whinging about that then!
Anyway last Tuesday was all about ice and snow - in the middle of one of the hottest summers I can every remember that sounds so odd.
Anyway, on to the reason we came all this way. We were bused out to Lake Tasmin with our guides most of whom are English.
Tom was our guide and he was great, full of lots of info about the icebergs and glacier.
It is amazing.
The colours that shine through the ice are so pretty, lots of orange and dark blue, you can just see them in this photo next door.
Only 20% of the ice shows above the surface and this lake is a couple of kms deep so the icebergs get blown down to the bottom end of the lake and congregate!
Last time we were here the icebergs were all over the lake so the wind must of been strong just lately.
Some of the icebergs we saw today only broke off five days ago and in this heat we are having, some of them don't last long therefore the lake is getting bigger.
The glacier retreated up this valley a long time ago and glacial valleys are flat and full of stones etc that are left by the glacier as it retreats. Glacial valleys have flat bottoms!
The Tasmin Glacier is the longest of the Southern Alps glaciers of which there are many, the more famous being Fox and Franz Joseph which you can only get to from the West Coast unless you get a helicopter.
The cliffs are awesome - that word again - and make you feel very small.
We thoroughly enjoyed our trip, we've been wanting to do that since we came last time so am so pleased we got to get up close and personal to such a natural wonder of the world.
We took our time going back down Lake Pukaki as the lake was shining such a wonderful azure colour. No colour enhancing needed on this photo, just as is on the day.
We also called in to the Salmon farm to look at the leaping fish and buy some salmon for our tea tomorrow.
So I have been doing some scrapbooking (I need to do some patchwork to catch up with the JS BOM) as it is cooler in my room.
I do like doing these pages, as well as getting my creative juices flowing it brings back the memories of the photos too.
I have nearly 300 photos from our weekend mini break to sort through now so may do a couple of blogs to get through them.
TTFN, take care, big hugs and keep warm all of you.xxx