Okarito

This morning I woke to several fabulous finds: 1) feet and ankles itchy and full of sand fly bites, 2) a house full of bugs from the BBQ and booze fest the night before when we had all the doors and windows open, and 3) the kitchen in our rental house is the biggest of the bunch, which means the wake up call comes at 6:30am when Josh and Geoff (our guides) turn up to start cooking breakfast.  Needless to say the morning is off to a not-so-great start, but at least the day can hopefully only get better.

Our activities today started with kayaking on the Okarito Lagoon and up a portion of the Okarito River.  The Okarito Lagoon is a large basin of shallow open water and tidal flats at the Okarito River delta, and the largest unmodified wetland in NZ.  Surrounded by rainforest, its home to many bird species, including white heron, spoonbills, oystercatchers, terns, and shags.  Its also a great place to explore by kayak, and I enjoyed watching the fish jump in the water in front of my kayak, the herons and terns fishing in the shallows, and the stilts striding along the mudflats.  Here is a view up the Okarito River from my kayak:

and a view of a white heron looking for lunch in the distance:

Even though it was overcast, cool and a bit drizzly at times (the kind of weather the sand flies love, unfortunately), it was still really peaceful to quietly paddle along and enjoy.  We kayaked for about 3.5-4 hours, and since I had a solo kayak I was absolutely exhausted afterwards.

In the afternoon several of us set out on a short hike up to the Okarito Trig.  The Trig is a point of triangulation with the Southern Alps, and on a clear day we would be able to see spectacular views of them.  In fact, Mt. Cook is not too far from here - probably no more than 40 km according to the map I have.  While it did clear at the coast in the afternoon, unfortunately it remained overcast inland, so we had to be content with our views of the Tasman Sea and the Okarito Lagoon.

Tasman Sea:

Okarito Lagoon and coastline:

We got a good (almost all) group picture too - from left to right, Charles, Kevin, Marci, Jenny, Nate (kneeling), Chantal, Tom, Erica, and me:

On the way back from the hike, we encountered one of life’s best riddles (insert your own joke here): 

I think the word on the front of the van says it all.  :)

Tonight we enjoyed dinner at a restaurant & pub in Franz Josef, got to watch some of the Super Rugby matches with the locals, and learned what a Speights “Southern Man” is all about - more to come on that as we travel further south.  After dinner we organized an informal hike back up the first part of the Trig walk to see the glow worms which a few members of our group discovered quite by accident when they went for a drunken night hike after our BBQ the evening before (and shockingly no, I was not one of the drunks on that hike).  After turning off our headlamps it took a few mins for our eyes to adjust, but once they did we could finally see the areas where the glow worms were.  They are just tiny pin points of light, almost like really tiny LED lights, and they hang out on the underside of the tree roots and soil in the small hollowed out (by nature) sections along the trail.  In those sections where there were a lot of glow worms, there was almost a faint, ambient glow against the back of the small hallowed-out cave.  This was one of the things I was definitely looking forward to seeing, and it came in an unexpected place, so that was a huge bonus.  Great end to the day.

Tomorrow we got to Glacier Country.  Woohoo!