We woke up to another clear day, as the sun continued to rise it burned off the very thin layer of wispy cloud leaving a bright blue sky. Buffett breakfast was OK, surprisingly quiet given we were there before 08.00, perhaps some of the tour groups had been and gone, there are a lot of Japanese and some Chinese tourists. Thankfully most of these are on buses and not driving, they seem to have trouble keeping to the correct side of the road which we remember well from last year in South Australia.

We assembled with about 30 others at 09.20, again mostly Japanese. We had to drive about 10km to Lake Tasman to board the actual boats. As we travelled our guide was very informative about the views and geography. The melt water from the glacier feeds and has created Lake Tasman which is about 5km long and over 300m deep in places, the river running down from the mountain feeds into Lake Putakaki, there are 7 lakes in series joined by man made channels and at each one there is a hydroelectric plant, in total 30% of NZ's electricity is generated here. The river water is milky white as it is full of rock flour, basically ground down rock, as it hits the lake and merges with fresh water the heavier particles sink leaving the finer ones in suspension, the only radiant light to escape is the shorter blue wavelength so the lake appears blue.

We had passed Mount ? which appears in The Lord of The Rings film, it is the mountain upon which Minis Tirith is CGI'd.

We had a 20 minute walk from where we dropped off by the bus to get to the Lakeside, there we were split into groups and had to put life vests on before boarding the small rigid hull boats and then it was out on to the lake. We sped down to the south side of the lake to which all of the ice bergs of various sizes are blown to, the ice of these varies in colour, some are dirtier than others depending on the amount of silt and rock and also their orientation, i.e. wether they have turned over or not. The bergs themselves are made up of ice crystals, breaking a chunk off our guide passed it round, because it is made of super compressed snow it is 8-10 times denser than ice made in a freezer even though it has lots of small air bubbles inside.

We then sped along the lake towards the glacier wall, we could only approach to about 400 metres as there is an ice shelf jutting out and also because of the danger of ice bergs breaking off. The glacier face is up to 100 metres tall, the glacier itself is covered in rocks and dirt which help to slow the melting but even so in 60 years it has receded significantly and in another 120 years the remaining 17km of the glacier will dissappear. One of the party first learned to ski in the area now covered by the lake 60 years ago.

Then it was back to shore, walk back to the bus and then back to the hotel. We grabbed a sandwich for lunch and then headed out for a short walk, the walk to Kea Point is listed as a 1 hour return. I don't know who that timing was aimed at but it took us 50 minutes each way and we aren't slow by any means, but for the most part it was easy walking, there was even a boardwalk stretch that had been installed to protect part of the meagre grassland. The early part of the walk had us through some thin bush but the later part was over more rough ground and was mostly uphill, we also crossed over some dry river beds filled with boulders and small rocks and gravel. A lot of the rivers are dry because most of the land is 200 metre deep gravel and rock beds so water drains away very quickly. In the morning we had seen a 200 metre waterfall gushing with water but no pool at the bottom, it simply all drained away. At Kea Point itself we had a great view of the Mueller glacial lake and of Mount Sefton, the glacial lake was very blue.

Earlier whilst eating our sandwich at the hotel we had heard a deep rumbling sound, looking towards Mount Sefton we could see some dust/snow powder rising to the air so there must have been an avalanche or rock slip. Because of the time it takes for sound to travel that distance we didn't actually see the avalanche only its immediate after effects. There were several more during the time of our walk, again all we noticed was the sound and then the dust not the actual event.

After our walk we rested up before going for another meal at the Old Mountaineers Cafe before going back to pack up our bags.