Matukituki river valley and Mt Aspiring

This morning M and l took a trip up the Matukituki river into Aspiring National Park. We went by jet boat, whizzing along the surface of this beautiful braided river, ducking and diving to avoid the shingle banks and flying over small rapids.
40 kilometers later we stopped off and walked through alpine like meadows and into ancient beech forests admiring the glaciers whenever we saw them. There are 6 glaciers that feed into this river all coming from up in the Southern Alps, one could see the colouration caused by ash from Australian bush fires.