January 26-29
After packing up our stuff in Te Anau, we headed out on the road again. Our destination for the night was Wanaka, a small city north of Queenstown. The drive was listed as about three hours from Te Anau, back through Queenstown via the Devil's Staircase again. Three hours seems to have become the standard distance we choose to drive, mainly because we do so much stopping on the way from place to place that it usually takes much longer for us to get anywhere. Today was no different. As we were on our way north we encountered the Kawarau Bridge, the world's first commercial Bungy jumping site. Although neither of has any interest in actually jumping, we both wanted to stop and take a look. We stayed through two people's jumps and that was enough for both of us! I didn't even like being on the observation deck!
One of the girls we saw jumping off the Kawarau Bridge. It took this one about ten minutes to work up the courage to jump!
Our next stop was in Gibbston at the Gibbston Valley Winery. They do a nice little wine tasting, but they also have a cheesery on site! We tasted a couple of wines and then made our way to the cheesery to pick up some snacks. We got two bottles of wine, a few different local cheeses and some crackers to go with them. About another hour up the road was the Lazy Dog cafe. Many of the vineyards here are too small to do their own tastings, so the Lazy Dog has become a tasting spot for those vineyards. The cafe is in a lovely spot with a beautiful view of the mountains out front. They also make their own beef sausages, and you know we can't pass that up! We did a small tasting there and then split a little sausage plate for a late lunch.
Shaun at Gibbston Valley
The view out the front of the Lazy Dog Cafe. See if you can guess which way the crazy wind was blowing?
By the time we got to Wanaka it was late afternoon and the weather seemed to be turning colder and a little overcast. When we pulled into the town the first thing we encountered was a farmers market so we headed over to check it out. We ended up getting everything we needed for dinner; a lamb rack, salad greens, portabello mushrooms and even some hot smoked salmon for a snack the next day. Now we just needed to sort out our lodging so we could cook it all up!
We had planned to go to the Top 10 Holiday park in Wanaka, but unlike many of the others, it wasn't listed in our Lonely Planet Guidebook. When we got there we could see why. It looked much more run down that the other Top 10's, so we simply drove in and drove out. (No reservations comes in handy sometimes!) After a few failed attempts to get a B&B we ended up at the Wanaka Youth Hostel, which came highly recommended by Lonely Planet. It had a nice little lobby/dining room area with a huge picture window that looked out over Lake Wanaka. Even without the YHA discount, it was pretty inexpensive and the rooms were fine for what we needed so we booked an ensuite double room checked in.
The big, well stocked kitchen at the Wanaka YHA
The picture window overlooking beautiful Wanaka
That evening we cooked dinner at the Hostel and opened up a bottle of the wine we had purchased on the road. The hostel kitchen was fully stocked with pots, pans, cutlery and tableware which made cooking easy. We made a nice dinner and ate it by the picture window. Later we ended up chatting with two college aged Australian girls who had been traveling NZ for about two months. We were going north and they were going south so they gave us advice on the glaciers and we gave them advice on Milford and Doubtful Sounds. Its great to talk to fellow travelers here, you get lots of good tips!
The next morning we were off again. The drive time from Wanaka to Franz Joseph was listed as three hours and they had a highly rated Top 10 park so we decided to make that our stop for the night. Again, the drive was just part of the fun. We stopped every time we saw something that looked cool and never once regretted it. Our first stop was a nature walk down along a beach. It only took about 30 minutes and we saw some gorgeous tropical landscape and beautiful beaches.
The local plants are wild and beautiful. I loved these ferns with the curled up centers
The drive itself is often part of the adventure. There are views along the West Coast that are so beautiful they look almost unreal. Sometimes we pulled over to take it all in, other times we just enjoyed the view from the car. It wasn't all picture perfect views though! These roads are not for the faint of heart. There are hairpin turns on cliff side roads and my favorite, the one lane bridges! They always have a sign showing which was had to "give way", but sometimes you can't even see if there's already someone on the bridge! The craziest one we saw had not one, but two bays on the bridge so you could pull over in case someone was coming the other way. Yike! It's all part of the adventure though!
Doesn't the scenery look fake? It was so beautiful!
The one lane bridge that went on forever!
Our next stop was Fox Glacier. Both Franz Joseph and Fox Glacier have been around for over 20,000 years, so no worries if you can't get to them right away! You don't necessarily need to see both, but Fox is in retreat and Franz Joseph is still advancing so they do look very different. In both cases you drive to a parking lot and walk around 30 minutes until you get to the designated observation point, usually about 100 meters from the glacier. In the case of Fox Glacier, the ice looked like something that had been chopped off by a God-Sized hatchet. The block of ice at the end often has van sized chunks fall off it so you don't want to get too close! In 2009 two 20-something brothers ignored the ropes and walked right up to the glacier get better pictures. They were crushed to death moments later by tons of falling ice as a huge chunk of the glacier broke off. They show copies of the newspaper articles from that accident on all the signs as a reminder that there are reasons for the ropes.
On the walk to Fox Glacier
Shaun and I at Fox Glacier
When we finished walking back from the glacier, we decided to do one more hike for the day. Lake Matheson has a walking trail that winds up and down the hills around the small lake and sits in the shadow of Mount Cook. The hike only takes about 90 minutes and the scenery is gorgeous- beautiful plants and trees and flowers all around. Plus, the area around the lake was teeming with birds and ducks, and the fields were full of cows and sheep. It was a really nice hike.
Shaun on the walk around Lake Matheson
After our hike, we made our way up the road to the town of Franz Joseph, named for the Austrian ruler from the Hapsburg family. (You may remember them from many other posts from Europe!) In Franz Joseph we checked into the nicest Top 10 Holiday park we had seen yet. The grounds were really pretty, with native flowers and plants dotting the area, and the mountains looming above. It reminded us both of Switzerland. They had no basic cabins left and it was too cold for camping so we ended up getting an ensuite cabin. (Those are the ones with a private bathroom- a luxury on this trip!) We had a big comfy bed, a TV with satellite reception and a little dining area in our room. The facility also had a huge laundry room, which was something we really needed at this point. We grilled up some food for dinner, did two loads of laundry, took hot showers and watched a little TV. That may sound like a commonplace night at home, but for us it was a real treat!
The town of Franz Joseph, it reminded us of Switzerland
The next morning we packed up the car again and headed to Franz Joseph Gacier. Although the routine was the same (park the car, walk 30 minutes, view glacier, walk back) the glaciers were very different. As I mentioned before, Franz Joseph is advancing so it looks very different than Fox Glacier. It had a beautiful ice archway at the bottom and it sloped gracefully down the hill instead of the sharp cuts we had seen at Fox. It was nice to be able to compare the two and see how different they were.
Me at Franz Joseph, see the beautiful ice archway?
When we left Franz Joseph we headed north. Our ultimate goal was the Golden Bay area and Abel Tasman park, but we knew from experience that we needed to stop at what the guidebooks determined to be the three hour driving distance. Westport fit the bill so while we drove I called ahead and made a reservation for a cabin at the Top 10 there. Around mid-day we stopped at a little rest area by a pond for a bite to eat. We had the smoked salmon we had purchased in Wanaka, along with some cheese and fresh apricots and crackers. It all would have been great with a cold bottle of rose, but we were driving so that would have to wait.
Our picnic by the pond. Hot smoked salmon, apricots, cheese and crackers. Yummy!
The best stop on the drive that day was the Pancake Rocks at Paparoa National Park. These amazing rock formations, so named because they look like stacks of pancakes, were formed over thousands of years in a process called stylobedding, but geologists still don't quite understand how they ended up forming these cool levels. There were displays on some of the theories, but the real draw is just looking at the rocks and the surrounding area. Throughout these cliffside rock formations there were also huge blowholes. The tide was low at the time so we only saw a little of the action at the blowholes, but what we saw was impressive! The whole park was beautiful, with a nice walkway leading along the waters edge and beautiful local plants and flowers all along the path.
The pancake rocks at Paparoa National Park
One of the blowholes in action
Finally we arrived in Westport. There isn't a whole heck of a lot to the town of Westport, so we just settled into our cabin, heated up some chili we had frozen and opened a bottle of wine. (Of course you can have wine with Chili!!) The next day we were arriving in Golden Bay, and we were both really excited. We settled down to sleep in our bed, feeling like a couple of kidsin summertime, headed back to more wilderness, hikes and camping.
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