Happy Valentine's Day from down under.

Lake Matheson, 6 km west of Fox Glacier Township, is famous for its reflections, which is due to the dark water. On clear days Mt Cook and Mt Tasman might be in the reflection; we could see parts of the snowy peaks through the fluffy clouds.  

Mt Cook (named for the explorer and called Aoraki by the Maori) is NZ’s tallest mountain.   We will see the other side of the mountain near the end of our trip when we visit Mt Cook National Park.

We drove farther down the road to a mountain viewpoint and were surprised to also see a great view of Fox Glacier.   
 
After leaving Fox Glacier, we crossed Cook River, which is an azure blue due to glacial silt. We continued south along the west coast through dense rain forest, with mountains on our left and occasionally views of the sea on our right.  

We stopped at Lake Paringa for our PB&B sandwich. Then the road climbed into the clouds. We stopped briefly at Knight’s Point for a view of the Tasman Sea and sea stacks. I love that the point was named after a surveyor’s dog.

We came to the small community of Haast; it was so small we missed it and had to go back to find diesel. Haast is located where the Haast River meets the sea. We followed the river up Haast Pass and stopped along the way to take short walks to waterfalls. The first was an easy walk through kamahi and silver beech to the 90 ft. Thunder Creek Falls. The falls were spectacular and the trees reminded me of those in "Lord of the Rings." 

We continued up the pass through Aspiring National Park to the beautiful Fantail Falls, named because the bottom of the fall fans out over the rocks.    We finally made it to the top of the pass and crossed over a high-in-the-sky bridge. We’ve now left the west coast.

Our campground was another 18 km down the pass, but we are still in a remote and isolated part of Haast Pass. An early traveler must have been in a bad mood when he named this beautiful valley “Siberia.”  He also named two nearby pretty mountain peaks “Dreadful” and “Awful.”  He was NOT a happy traveler, but we are certainly happy to be camping in this scenic spot. As they say here in NZ, it is “brilliant!”

We are celebrating Valentine’s Day by opening our very special Himmelsfeld wine and enjoying it with some cheese, crackers and potato soup - followed by some excellent NZ Cadburry Chocolate!