Friday 18 February 2011

New Zealand Adventures – Manapouri (16/02/2011)

It seems my camera woes continue....after downloading yesterdays photos to my computer I saw that many of my photos were blurry, when a few days ago they were not. This clearly got me worried that something serious has gone wrong with the camera sensor, so I had mass clean of my lenses, and took most photos using manual focus, and hoped that the photos would turn out better today.

The weather was once again fantastic, and after a well deserved lie in, we went to the nearby town of Manapouri to do a spot of hiking (or tramping if you’re kiwi). We opted for a short 3.5 hour walk called the “circular track”. The track began by getting a water taxi across the river that feeds into (or out of) Lake Manapouri – I swear I haven’t spent as much time on boats as I have in the recent months! So off we went, tramping away. The walk went through some really lush forest which had loads of amazing mushrooms that I obviously took photos of. For the first half hour or so, the walk was very pleasant, and then it started to go uphill...you all know (well maybe you don’t) that I’m not a fan of uphill walking, so the sweat began pouring off me – it was hot as well though. Eventually, we reached the top of this hill (it felt like a mountain), and got a lovely view of Mt. Titiroa and the surrounding mountains/foothills/lakes. After stopping for lunch, we realised that we didn’t have much time to get back to the water-taxi pick up point; the race for the taxi started, and we frog-marched down the hill (with a few stops for mushroom photo taking). When we reached the bottom of the hill, and began the walk along the river front, we realised that we hadn’t gained enough time, so I ran (yes that’s right – I RAN!) along the track to make it in time – which we did! Yet another go me moment! On the way back we stopped at Fraser Beach on the shore of Lake Manapouri for a well deserved paddle in the lake. It turned out to be a very hot day, so wading in the cool water was lovely.

Our evenings activities consisted of a massive photo-geeking session, discussions regarding the universe and it’s creation, and consequently how pointless sea ice research is!. We headed off down to the shore of Lake Te Anau for sunset and moonrise, and proceeded to take tens of photos of sunset over the mountains across the lake, and the reflections in the water. It was beautiful, and I also learned how to do a few fancy things with my camera too – always a bonus. Another successful day of photography.

No comments:

Post a Comment