A trip to the south - New Zealand, South Island, part 1

There are two choices to see the Abel Tasman park. The first one is to walk the coastal track, which brings you from bay to bay through the forest. The second one is to go on sea kayak and explore the coast on the water. It is faster, and as my time here is limited, I chose this option. And that was awesome. The guide was really cool, and brought us first to a very little island with a very little paradisiac beach where we had coffee and home-made cakes. Later on we went to different bays, and saw few pinguins and seals. We came back to our starting point by boat, with one of the numerous water-taxi, since you can acces most of the park only via the sea. I went south the next day, after a morning excursion to the clearest watersprings in the world: the Pupu springs. And actually it's true, the water there is cristal clear and you can see through it perfectly. On my way south, I stopped for lunch in a wonderful town called St Arnaud. Definitely a place to see. Seriously, the lake Rotoroa is quite nice, with a view on the mountains where tourists come skying in winter. But that was a short stop before the real goal of the day, the pancake rocks on the west coast. These big rocks are the result of years of sea erosion and offer a nice and different view on the Tasman sea. I didn't spend much more time there and kept on going south to the glaciers region. I spent an afternoon on the Fox glacier, one of the two main glaciers of the region. The most amazing there, apart from the colour of the glacier in some places, is the temperature difference between the forest close to the glacier and the glacier itself. As the guide explained us, it's quite unusual to have a glacier at such a low altitude, and this is due to the amount of rain falling there, wich is sufficient to keep the amount of ice constant at the top of the glacier (it is moving 5 meters every day !!!). Before leaving the glacier area, I stopped at Lake Matheson, which is famous for it's reflexion of Mounts Cook and Tasman, the two highest mountains of the country. The weather was good, but a bit windy, and the reflexion on the water was not that good. But the place was really nice anyway, and after a short walk around the lake, I moved on south again, to Wanaka. I arrived there in the evening and got a bed in a room with a direct view on the lake and the mountains around. Awesome. 

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