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| Trail to Monro Beach |
Upon getting up at my hotel in Franz Josef, I packed up and set out. Wanaka was to be my final destination for the day. I had a few stops saved in Google Maps for the day. It is a nice way to split up the drive. The first stop was an easy hike to Monro Beach. Up to this point I have mostly been bug bite free. That all changed after the hike to the Monro Beach. The hike wasn't a bad one, by any means. The first part of it took you through a forest covered in moss. It was a sort of magical area. As you approached the beach the bugs came out. I think they were the sandflies I had heard about, though I have seen mosquitoes in New Zealand, so they are a possibility. But as it was as I got to the beach the bites came, the sandflies are the obvious culprit. I also had my hopes up as I got to the beach because there were signs saying this beach plays home to a breeding colony of Fiordland Crested Penguins. The signs had said that the penguins breed and raise chicks between July and December and then return to the sea until the following winter. It appears that these penguins had already left for the year because there was not a sign of any around.
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| Ship Creek Swamp |
From Monro Beach, I hopped back in the car for the short drive to Ship Creek Beach. Here there was a swamp! Did you know that it was possible to have a swamp with no alligators or crocodiles or murderous snakes? Neither did I. There was a boardwalk through the swamp and then it continued out towards the beach. The dunes along the beach had beautiful plants that help keep the dunes from washing away. This area had a lot of big waves rolling in. Back in time this area was covered in glaciers that emptied into the sea. As the glaciers retreated sand and sediment filled in creating this flat portion of land near the coast. Most of the rest of the coast had been mountainous up to this point with steep drop-off or maybe a max of 1km of flat land between the mountains and sea.
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| Ship Creek Beach Dunes |
Up next as I snaked through Haast Pass were a series of waterfalls and then I reached Blue Pools Track (here you'll see "track" instead of "trail"). By this point in time it was raining; and not just a light rain. I opted to pull out my rain pants for the first time on the trip. I threw my rain coat on and then hiked the 1 mile out to the Blue Pools, which unfortunately weren't the bright blue color they were supposed to be due to the intense rains of the previous few days which pushed more sediment into the water, so they were more of a grey color.
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| Just a little wet! |
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| Not a Blue Pool |
It wasn't long before we left the rain behind and hit the northern edge of Lake Wanaka, the 4th largest lake in New Zealand. What astounded me most was how blue it was! The lake reaches more than 980ft deep and is cold! (I stuck my feet in it!) But it was so pretty!
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| Lake Wanaka |
I made it to Wanaka, checked into my hotel, made supper, and then went and got some ice cream! And then woke up in the middle of the night scratching my bug bites.
The next day was to be LOTR filming location seeing and then hiking. I was on my way back to Wanaka when I hit something in the road and seconds later my car sounded funny. I pulled over into a driveway and got out of my car...flat front tire! Not in the plan. The first thing I had to figure out was how to call roadside assistance because on this trip I've had an e-sim for data, but no cell service. I had to figure out how to get a day pass activated on my phone so I could call for help. About an hour later, a tow truck arrived to haul me back to Wanaka. Thankfully I was only about 12 km outside of town so it wasn't too terribly far (roughly $95 in towing charges though). Then I had to get a new tire! Yay! Everyone was really nice and I was back on the road about 2 1/2 hours after the whole ordeal started, though I was $250 poorer thanks to the towing charges and new tire. And I had also learned I had been pronouncing Wanaka wrong the whole time. I had been saying Wah-NAH-kah, but it is actually WAN-uh-kuh.
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| Sad day. :( |
But because this ate up a couple of hours, I switched up my plans. Instead of doing the short version of the Diamond Lake trail and following that up with another trail, I just did the Diamond Lake to Rocky Mountain trail. This trail offered amazing views of the lake and a LOTR filming site. After finishing the trail, getting back to the hotel, showering, and making supper, I went to the movie theater across the street to see Wicked, which of course hit theaters the day I left on my trip.
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| Diamond Lake |
On my last morning in Wanaka, I took a nice walk out to see That Wanaka Tree. That is literally what it is called. It is a lone tree growing about 100m out into Lake Wanaka. I feel like I've seen pictures of it before.
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| That Wanaka Tree |
From Wanaka, I took the Cardrona Pass to Queenstown. There are a bunch of nice overlooks on the way into the valley from the pass. At one of them you can look straight to the airport runway. Before I left on this trip, one day while I was setting up the SkyCourier flight simulator up for a tour, I put in the Queenstown airport to try to fly out of. I learned it was a tricky one when I test flew the simulator to make sure everything was working. There are mountains everywhere in the area that make a nice gently sloping landing difficult, butt it was a pretty flight. And seeing it in person, the area surrounding Queenstown is just stunning. Quite literally, if New Zealand wasn't so far away from everything, I would say this is my dream town. Mountains, a lake, not too big, but not too small.
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| Looking down into the valley towards Queenstown. Airport is about 1/3 of the way from the left side of the photo in the middle. |
As I got down the pass, instead of turning towards Queenstown, I turned the other way to stop at the gorge where the bungee jumping is. Watching people jump off that bridge, it's just absolutely insane! You can barely get me to jump off a 3m diving board at a pool and here people are diving in the abyss off a 43m tall bridge to the Kawarau River.
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| Umm...no. |
After that I headed to the Kiwi Park. One thing you have to do in New Zealand is see kiwi, right? This seemed the perfect place to do it. They had a large conservation park with New Zealand animals, an animal show, and a kiwi chat. New Zealand is weirdly bereft of natural mammals beyond a few bats and marine mammals. However, as I previously mentioned, stoats, weasels, rats, and possums found their way to New Zealand and have been killing many of its natural species, which are mostly birds, including a lot a ground dwelling and ground producing birds. The country is working with a goal to demammalize the country by 2050 using traps. It is starting to work, just slowly. In 2010, there were roughly 50 million possums, but now they estimate only 30 million. One of the keepers at the park said during the show, "this is the only place in the world where people swerve to hit possums instead of avoid them." Kiwi are nocturnal animals so their exhibit is kept dark, with a hint of moonlight, so people can see them moving about. Female kiwi are larger than males, but still probably only about large chicken sized. Female kiwi lay gigantic eggs that are roughly 20% of their body weight! Male kiwi also have smaller beaks than female kiwi.
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| A kea again! |
Also at the Kiwi Park I saw a Tuatara, which is a reptile that looks like a lizard, but broke off from actual lizards millions of years ago. They've been around since the Jurassic period, but today are only found on New Zealand's outer islands where none of those mammals live and they are able to survive.
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| A tuatara. |
After the Kiwi Park, I got checked into my hostel. It is the first time this trip I've been in a dorm room at a hostel. I have stayed at a few other hostels on the trip, but always in a private room at them. I made the decision when booking my Queenstown stay, that I would rather stay in the middle of everything, where it was easily walkable. And unless you're staying at a hostel, you're looking at much more expensive hotels. So essentially I could stay in a dorm at a hostel for 3 nights for the same price as one night in a private room. During this process I also found out what a pain parking is in the Central Business District. I ended up parking almost a kilometer away so I didn't have to pay for parking.
After some ice cream and supper (yes, in that order), I headed off to bed. One thing I did find interesting is it is obvious this place is different than, say, a city in Europe. 5 out of 6 beds had people in them by 10 last night, whereas most hostels I've been in in Europe, have at that time of night, had maybe only 1/3 of the people in them because the rest are out at the bars and clubs. Here I think most people are getting up and getting out hiking or adventuring, which is better started early.
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| About 50 steps from my hostel. |
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