Hiking in the Southern Alps

Me outside of castle rock. It was windy!



The view of the southern alps from castle rock.



Me at castle rock.



Me at the Devil's Punchbowl waterfall. Check out that sweet beard I've got going.



The southern alps, as we were leaving Arthur's pass.

Today, we took Phil's rental car out into the Souther Alps. We first stopped off at Castle Rock, which were these really cool Sandstone formations. I climbed all over the large boulders. It was a lot of fun. We then went into Arthur's Pass. It was sunny and relatively warm when we went to Castle Rock, but at Arthur's Pass, it was cold and cloudy and rainy/snowy. It was pretty cool. We stopped off at this cafe for lunch when I looked outside and spotted a large, brightly colored bird. It was green with an orange underside. It's called a Kea and is a native mountain parrot. We saw a few later on when we were hiking. We first hiked Devil's Punchbowl which was a 130 meter waterfall. Then we started to hike up Cassidy trail, but it was a very steep, very wet dangerous trail, so we hiked until a viewpoint, then hiked back. The trail was rated at 1 Rashmi, that is, Rashmi fell 1 time. After that, we hiked the Bridal Veil path, which was a huge disappointment. We hiked for almost an hour and saw pretty much nothing. It was still cool to be in the mountains of New Zealand, though.

Flight is scheduled for tomorrow morning. It's been fun in new zealand, but I'm ready to get to antarctica. I'll have to be up at 5 am to be at the USAP by 6 for my 9 am flight!

I'm going to meet up with the group in a few minutes for dinner.