Oh, how I don’t want to write my journal entry tonight! 😅
It’s actually just after 12:30 in the morning, and I’ve written four catch-up journal entries today already and was working on part of the fifth when I realized what time it was and that I still haven’t written today’s entry. 😅
Ugh.
I made a rather early departure from where I stayed the night last night, as there was a decent chance that, although it was a DOC conservation area, the fact that there were no-camping signs at the very beginning of this long road, made me wonder.
So I decided to get up and out early, just in case. 🙃
After taking some pictures. 😊
The getting out part was a little bit more of a challenge than I expected. My little van ran terribly–clearly misfiring, and misfiring badly.
Lovely.
It had run just fine yesterday after going through the water, so I didn’t seem like that would be the issue, but at the same time, it would seem to be a pretty big coincidence to have a completely different issue the morning after driving through a bunch of water.
So I stopped at a DOC trail-access road, opened the gate and closed it behind me, drove for maybe a few kilometers, opened another gate and closed that one behind me, and found myself in a nice little clearing where I was able to back my van down a slight slope toward yet another gate (this one padlocked closed), and chill inside my van, the nearby trees shielding me from the sun’s rays beating down on the van.
I hung out in that little car parkish thing for probably a couple hours, mostly working on my journal catch-up efforts. Once the sun rose over the tallest of the trees, I stopped my journal writing and went to work trying to figure out what was wrong with my engine.
Assuming that it was probably an issue with parts having gotten wet, I immediately began by removing the air intake hose, the air filter housing and filter, and then I began disconnecting the coil packs one by one to see which cylinder was the issue.
It was cylinder one.
So I removed the coil pack from cylinder one and noticed that it had a very large crack all the way down the side of it.
Lovely.
I figured that the electrical pulse going from the electrical connector through the coil to the spark plug was most likely shorting itself out against the walls of the spark plug well in that cylinder.
Still, I wiped off the coil, dried out the spark plug well, and then did the same for coil number two and its spark plug well.
Success! My little van was back to running as smooth as butter. 🎉
From there, I headed further south down the east coast of Lake Tekapo until I saw a little dirt road going off toward the lake. Being in my exploratory mode, wanting to get a feel for the whole area, I turned on to the little dirt road and headed straight out toward the lake.
There I continued working on my journal catch-up work until a gentleman rode up on his dirt bike and parked on the rocky lake shore. I let him eat in peace for a little while before going over and striking up a conversation.
His name was Kim (spelling?), from the Netherlands (Amsterdam), and he was on a working holiday visa, traveling around for a little while before needing to get another job… next month was it? 🤷
We chatted for a good little while, one of the things we talked about being that he was heading toward the Lilybank-Macaulay River Crossing (what I had attempted yesterday).
I told him that I was excited for him and encouraged him to try to forward all of the branches of the braided river and then ride all the way up the glacial valley to the three lakes at the base of the mountains as far in as you can go before you have to actually go up the mountains.
I really want to make it out to those lakes someday myself.
Anyway, once we were done chatting, I drove back over to the river crossing with him as sort of a security net, so he could have someone else in case he got into trouble trying to cross the rivers on his dirt bike.
He didn’t get into any trouble, but I almost did. 🙃
At first, I wasn’t going to try and cross the first really wide crossing because of what had happened yesterday (both the extra water that made my morning a little more eventful, and also because it’s just sketchy enough that if not done properly, I could relatively easily get stuck and be there until someone came along who both had a tow rope, and was capable of hauling me out).
I drove down to that first crossing, and then I backed all the way back up thinking better of tempting feet again, before finally deciding to go ahead and give it a try just to reduce the distance I would have to walk / jog to catch up to Kim on his dirt bike.
This second crossing was a lot sketchier than the first, my tires spinning and excavating river bed somewhere around the 3/4 mark of the crossing. 😬
Gratefully, my tires only excavated a very little bit before grabbing again and pulling me the rest of the way through the river and up and onto the other side.
🙏
That was close. 😅
I then drove my van up onto the little berm on the side of the dirt road, two wheels up on the berm and two wheels on the road (in order to give anyone who might come that way while I was parked there space to get by).
I then jogged over to where Kim was, as he passed through I think three additional crossings before stopping at the big one that stopped me in my tracks as well and convinced me to not even attempt any further crossings because I was just going to be turned away by that big one anyway.
He had the same reaction, which was probably good, because I’m betting the depth and swiftness of the river would knock him right over if he tried to go through.
Reassessing the situation for future efforts, I figured it would probably be best to drive along the rock further east of the river to where there were multiple braids that joined together into the one section that we were at. I figured crossing three smaller ones would be a lot more doable than trying to cross after the three had become one.
Hopefully, intelligent thinking. 🤓
But it’s a moot point with the vehicle that I currently have. Regardless of where I tried to cross, I’ll need a four-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle, preferably with a snorkel. 🙃
Anyway, I jogged back to my van as Kim rode back. I did u-turn (which was much easier today than yesterday (there was DOC vehicle parked on the grass on the other side, so I just drove right up onto the grass, past the DOC vehicle and back down onto the gravel road).
After getting a bit of a rolling start, I plowed through the water faster than I probably normally would have, more concerned than normal after nearly getting stuck the last time through.
Gratefully, my efforts were successful, and I crossed that braid of the river without even a hint of possibly getting stuck. 🥳
On the other side, I bid Kim farewell, as he headed back toward the town of Tekapo, and then I spent some time doing some preemptive work on my engine, popping the hood, and taking my little microfiber towel and drying off the top of the engine in the expectation that in doing so, I would keep any water from going into the spark plug wells this time.
I also emptied the air intake of the water that had gotten in it. 🙃
The engine continued to purr like a kitten, so after letting it run for a little while just to be sure it was dry enough, I went ahead and turned it off.
I decided to hang around for a bit because I saw someone walking across the braided river toward the side I was on.
I figured it was probably the girl who I’d seen drive up in her Estima (same generation as mine), and indeed she was–Laura from Barcelona. 😊
We chatted just briefly. She was a bit bummed because she had been walking for hours up the glacial valley toward the lakes that I want to go to, hoping to have someone in a four-wheel drive truck come along and give her a ride all the way to the hut that’s out there, but nobody ever came by, so eventually, she gave up, and made the walk back.
She asked me if I knew of any place nearby to go for a swim, but unfortunately, I didn’t.
The braided rivers don’t seem to lend themselves to swimming hole spots, so the only place that I could think of to tell her was to go to the spot where I met Kim earlier. I had thought about swimming there before, but I’ve gotten so spoiled swimming in rivers that swimming in lakes isn’t as enjoyable, even electric blue lakes like Lake Tekapo. 🙃
She bid me farewell and walked up the hill toward her van, and I filled up a water bottle with river water and proceeded to wash my hair. 🙃
Been a minute. 😅
After washing my hair, I walked up the hill to my van, just as Laura was driving away. I thought about maybe trying to catch up to her to show her where she could go swimming in the lake, but I gave up after a handful of kilometers of eating her dirt-road dust. 😅
I also came across the dirt-road turn off to Roundhill Ski Area, and since I was still in my exploratory mode, I turned off there and headed up into the hills, making it only a few kilometers before running into a gate that was padlocked closed, presumably since it was summer time, and there was no snow at the ski area.
But oh was the lake blue today!!!
I was excited when I woke up this morning, looked out my window, and saw blue sky instead of clouds. The forecast was for a mostly cloudy day, but today, gratefully and excitedly, was sunny nearly all day, which made for the absolutely stunning electric blue color that I remember seeing the last time I was here.
Oh, how I love this lake! 😁
Up there on the slopes above the lake looking down on that exceptional vista, I decided it would be a great time to call my sister Heather, so I called her, and she was excited to hear from me, and we chatted for a good long while.
At some point during our long conversation, I decided it would be best to continue the conversation while driving, since I had hopes of making it to Lake Pukaki and then Tasman Lake before the end of the day, but when I went to start my van, it ran more terribly than it did even this morning!
😶
But I dried it off! And it was running beautifully. Purring like a kitten!
Well, apparently that wasn’t good enough. 🙃
So I spent the next probably 30 minutes or more taking everything back apart, and this time finding that it was still under three that was wet, and not just wet, there was a lot of water in the spark plug well–So much so that I ended up removing the engine coolant overflow hose, drying it out, and using it to blow the water out of my spark plug well. 🙃
That’s a technique I used for years as a mobile mechanic (not removing the coolant overflow hose but using hose that I kept specifically for situations like that). I didn’t have my own hose this time, so I had to cannibalize a hose from the vehicle in order to be able to remove the water from the spark plug well.
Gratefully, those efforts succeeded fabulously, and once again, my lovely little Toyota engine was purring like a kitten.
🥳
I called my sister again as I rolled away from the little dirt turn around/car park and chatted with her for probably another 20 minutes as I drove south along the east coast of the lake, stopping over and over and over again to take pictures.
It’s funny: I did exactly the same thing driving that same road 3 years ago. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve looked at that blue, it’s just so striking that it’s amazing every time I look at it. All I have to do is look away from the lake for maybe 10 or 15 seconds, and when I look back, the electric blue is simply so vivid that it’s a whole new sensory feast every single time. Every. single. time my senses get a little jolt simply because of how vibrant the color is.
It truly is a wonder to behold. ☺️
And it’s been such a wonderfully beautiful day, and it’s been thrilling to be able to enjoy this experience again.
I’m so grateful that today is a sunny day. 🙏😁🙏😁🙏
I lost connection with my sister somewhere near the southeastern end of the lake, so I just kept snapping pictures as I went along, each time a new and exciting vista would just about frame itself, calling to me to take yet another picture.
Over and over again it happened–all the way to the very end of the lake. 🙃
In fact, at the very south end of the lake, I took some pictures from the side of the road, and then from the spillway/dam looking across the water to a foot bridge that spans the last remnants of the lake before it gets to the spillway.
What a magical experience. What a magical place.
☺️🙏☺️
Next up, Pukaki! A lake equally stunning, if not more so (because it’s fed pretty much only by glacier melt, I think) one glacial valley to the west of Tekapo.
As I was making the drive over to Lake Pukaki, I noticed some pretty awesome cloud formations to the south. I wish there had been a decent place to pull over and take pictures. But I didn’t get a single one when it would have been best, and later on when I had opportunities, it just didn’t… look the same.
To give it a bit of a visual, It was as if the hills closest to me to the south were the rim of a pot, and a thick white soup was overflowing the pot and running down the sides.
That’s not the best visual. 😆
But it was so cool watching the thick white clouds spill over the hills and run down the side of the hills almost as if a waterfall running down the side of the mountain, except the look of everything was so soft, as if airbrushed.
It didn’t look real.
Ah! That’s how I could explain it! If you’ve ever taken long exposure of the rapids in a river, the white frothy rapids smooth out into these super soft flows.
That’s what it looked like! Thick clouds overflowing, running over their boundary hills as soft and smooth as long-exposure rapids.
☺️
So cool. 🙂
At Lake Pukaki, I pulled over at a viewpoint to take some pictures, impressive, glacier-covered Mount Cook towering high above this larger electric blue masterpiece of nature.
Two masterpieces in the vista. Two masterpieces in the same camera frame.
Just… exquisite. ☺️
I’ve taken so many pictures today–so many pictures of electric blue lake. 😆
And now I’m taking pictures of towering mountains next to an electric blue lake.
What a privilege and a joy. 😊
My sister Heather called back as I was in the middle of my Pukaki-Cook photoshoot, and we chatted for maybe another 15 or 20 minutes before bidding each other a good night.
I stopped off at the freedom camping place that I was intending to stay at, but it was so crowded that it was a turnoff. Yes, there were spaces available, but they were probably 40 or 50 or 80 or maybe even 100 vehicles there. I was absolutely jam packed.
And I don’t blame a single one of them. What an amazing place to be able to park for a night. Incredible colors, breathtaking mountains, sunset behind the mountains… simply sensational.
Buuuuuut… I wasn’t feeling the crowds, and I’ve also learned through sad experience that it’s best to make hay while the sun shines. 🙃
I’ve had great weather today. There’s no guarantee that I am going to have good weather tomorrow, so I might as well continue on adventuring while the weather is good instead of calling it a night around 5:00 with several hours of daylight adventure time available.
So I left the camping area and started making my way up the west coast of Lake Pukaki, stopping, just like at Lake Tekapo, over and over again to take pictures of the dazzling displays of nature before me.
I took the turn off to Tasman Lake, Google showing that you could drive right up to it, but that was a lie. You actually needed to park at a car park and then walk about a kilometer and a half, or so, up to the lake.
By the time I got there, the sun was low enough in the sky that there were no more direct rays shining on the little glacial valley where Tasman Lake resides.
Knowing that I would only get a tiny fraction of the sensory experience if I did the hike tonight, I decided to wait until tomorrow.
Hopefully, there will be a lot of sun again tomorrow. 🤞
From there, I headed over to the Hooker Lake track parking lot, a paid parking lot. It didn’t dawn on me until after I’d been there for something like 45 minutes that I couldn’t just be there chilling and planning where I was going next. Only the first 20 minutes were free. After that, it was like $5 for an hour.
Oops. 😅
Good view, though. 🙃
So I paid for an hour’s worth of parking, staying for another 10 minutes because I’d already used up about 45 mostly working on my journal catch up efforts, And then headed out, hoping to maybe find a free spot to park on some dirt road off into the hills from the main road.
I didn’t make it very far before I noticed a woman walking by herself along the road with no cars in the immediate vicinity, so I slowed down, rolled my window down, and asked if she wanted a ride.
She was grateful for and accepted the ride, and I was grateful that I have that backward facing seat behind the front passenger seat, So I didn’t have to spend 5 minutes taking everything that I’ve got piled up on the passenger front seat and passenger front floorboard and checking it in the back only to have to put it all back once the ride was completed.
She was a younger woman, I’m guessing late 20s early 30s? from Beijing. I forget her name. She said it, and I think I was actually able to pronounce it decently, but I’ve forgotten already. Nice lady. I drove for probably two or three kilometers from where I picked her up to the hostel that she was staying at (I’m assuming it’s a hostel. It had the feel of one when I dropped her off).
After dropping her off, I kept going south along the west coast Pukaki until I came to exactly what I was hoping–a seldom-used, unmaintained dirt road that took off perpendicular from the main road up toward the mouth of a canyon.
By this time, it was fully dark outside, so I could only see just silhouettes of the mountain I was heading toward. I drove a good ways, following a road that was so narrow that there wasn’t really any place for me to turn around, even if I wanted to. 😅
I figured that since there was a clear path in, despite its lack of maintenance, that meant there must be, at some point at least, a place for a vehicle to turn around; so I kept on going, hoping that the turnaround spot didn’t come after a spot that was impassable for my little van. 🙃
Gratefully, after getting to a place that felt like it must be pretty darn close to the end of the line (the mountain was getting close on both sides, and the canyon ahead of me was… not very far ahead of me), there was indeed a little spot for me to turn around, and a perfect spot for me to park for the night without being in anyone else’s way if anyone happened to come up this way (which I highly doubt).
I’m really off the beaten path here. 🙃
I spent some more time working on my journal catch-up efforts, posting a fourth catch-up entry today, And now, after spending a whole heck of a lot of time writing this journal entry (the clock is about to take 2:15 a.m. 😅), I’m done for the night!
I’m grateful I’ve been making really good progress in my journal catch-up efforts. I think this is the best I’ve done since I’ve been in New Zealand. I’m actually writing about the day that I’ve had the same day that I had it, and at the same time, I’m posting several back entries a day.
🥳
As I was sitting writing in my journal, I noticed that my van was making its customary rattle noise that it sometimes makes, sometimes rather loudly, And I thought it might be a good time to hop out and see if I could figure out where the rattle was coming from, but I succeeded only in putting my face in weeds that I’m apparently allergic to, as my beard has been itching quite a lot since that folly of an effort. 😆
I also noticed, after turning my headlamp on, that there was something reflecting back at me maybe 50 m further up the canyon, so I walked over there and found a bicycle with a sweatshirt or something sitting on it, a rock holding it down so it wouldn’t blow away.
That actually got me a little concerned. Why on earth would there be a bicycle here. Was there someone up here? I shined my light around looking for a tent or something, but I could see no evidence that anyone was actually up here.
So I started looking online to see if anyone had been reported missing, as it seemed quite out of the norm for a bicycle, with gear, to be here well after dark.
But I didn’t find any reports of anybody missing, and I figured that I’d go take a look around in the morning to make sure nobody was injured or, heaven forbid, dead somewhere. 😬
But somewhere probably around maybe 1- or 1:30 in the morning, I saw the light of a headlamp in my side mirror as I was continuing to dictate my journal entry for the day.
I watched as the light continued all the way to the bicycle, and after a few minutes of watching the person sitting around with gear standing next to the bicycle, I exited my van with my headlamp, shown it toward the gentleman who was there, and asked if he was okay and if he needed any help.
He said he was fine, maybe a little grumpy and tired, but fine. He was an older gentleman, probably in his late 50s or 60s, I would guess, and he was coming back from, apparently, having climbed the mountain immediately behind us up the canyon.
😶
You go, brother! 💪😎
Well folks, it’s almost 2:30 in the morning. It’s taking me 2 hours to write this journal entry, despite the fact that I’m dictating it.
Good freaking gravy. 😅
Love and hugs to all y’all. 🤍
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Oh! The stars! 🌌 Such dark skies, and no clouds! ☺️
Lift the World 