Okarito Trig Walk

Since we couldn't do the longer Alex Knob trek at Franz Joseph, we pieced together an afternoon of hiking, between the glacier walk and this next nearby trek: the Okarito Trig Walk.

Okarito is home to a tidal estuary, a former gold mining town. The Trig Walk starts by a brief jaunt through Okarito's wetland (see above):

Then into some hilly rainforest bits... gorgeous plants:

Rainforest-y:

And when we reached the top, lovely, albeit a bit grey, views of the ocean, the lagoon and the mountains:

The clouds even parted for a second:

My close-up skillz are improving, no?

On our way back down from the view point, we ran into a couple of super cool looking birds that were flitting around like they were hopped up on Mountain Dew. And thus difficult to capture on camera. I don't know if you can see, but smack in the middle of the image is the white and black fan of the fantail bird... these mofos are crazy and factor into one of our misadventures later in the trip. Remember them.