First Day in New Zealand

We arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand exactly 24 hours after our original schedule. We had planned to spend one evening in Christchurch but instead we got the rental car and immediately headed toward Mt. Cook.

Here are a few shots from the flight from Auckland to Christchurch.

I thought this small town on the coast was interesting.

This is approaching Christchurch.

It took about 3.5 hours to drive from Chirstchurch to Mt Cook. The route goes through a variety of landscapes. Around Christchurch there is a lot of agriculture. Further east it gets quite dry and sparsely inhabited. It reminded of Wyoming or somewhere out west in the US. The mountains have a huge impact on the amount of rainfall in various parts of New Zealand.

A lot of ranching - cattle, sheep, deer.

A very pretty countryside.

We haven't encountered a 4 line interstate type highway, yet. All the roads between cities are 2 lane. And frankly, the traffic isn't bad. It is a pretty good sized country and there are only 4 million people living here.

Here is a shot of some sheep running through a field. Looks like the guys on the horse and the 4-wheeler and the dogs are moving them from one area to another.

The unusual color of this lake is because of the large amount of glacial flour or ground up rock in the water.

We arrived at the hotel at Mt Cook just before dinner time. The restaurant looked out at Mt Cook.

After dinner I sent outside and took this picture as the sunset lit up the top of the mountain with a nice golden light.

I took this picture about 30 minutes after the sun went down. It is a 1.6 second exposure. The one above is a 1/400 of a second exposure.

The light on the mountain at this time is light reflected or refracted by the atmosphere  It is the light you see in the western sky after the reds and yellow sunset colors have faded out.