New Zealand, Part 2
28 Nov 2004
On the 28th we woke up on the boat to much different (and I think much more typical) weather. Gloom, but no rain. Sort of like this:
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We made the long drive out to the next place we were going to camp, the town of Wanaka. On the way we were surprised by the "bra fence" along the last bit of this drive from Queenstown to Wanaka. This is even more fun than the shoe tree along US50 in Nevada!
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Sorry, that's the most you're going to get in a photo.
Otherwise this was mostly a driving day. The last stretch from Queenstown to Wanaka was very narrow and winding, not a fun drive. Beautiful, but a lot of shifting and a lot of paying attention to the road and not the huge yawning dropoffs on either side of the many many switchbacks.
29 Nov 2004
The campground at Wanaka was one of the nicer of the campgrounds that we used. And Wanaka itself is a beautiful little city. Another of those places that you can do almost any sort of outdoor activity without a whole lot of driving, from skiing to lake stuff to wine country touring..
A view from the campsite:
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A view of the campsite..
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Lake Wanaka, which is north of town. This beach is right in town, a short walk from the small central business and shopping district. This is looking mostly northwest, into Mt. Aspiring National Park, which I would have liked to have visited, but we didn't have the time.
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This is Lake Hawea, which is just east of Lake Wanaka. NZ6, which we were driving on our way to the Fox Glacier, runs between these two lakes.
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NZ6 runs north and then turns west, to the coast. For the last 30km or so it runs along the Haast River, and then turns north again at the coast, at Haast Village. Just south of there is Haast Beach, a very long gravelly beach. You can't see Australia, which is 1000 miles away, but it seems like you should be able to.
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After a stop for lunch on the beach we continued the drive north on NZ6. The road pulls away from the coast, the weather gets colder and wetter, and you arrive at the town of Fox Glacier, cleverly named for the Fox Glacier (below). The glacier is in Westland National Park (and maybe partly in Mt. Cook National Park).
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The above was shot on our hike out to see the glacier. There is water constantly flowing out of the glacier. It's very milky, full of pulverized granite.
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Here's the face of the glacier. It looks like a big pile of dirty snow from a distance, but then distances and sizes are always deceiving. It's really a huge pile of dirty ice.
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The weather here was definitely not what the Kiwis would call 'fine'. It was more like what we Americans would call 'crap'. It rained on and off and was windy most of the time. But we had our head to toe rain gear and really enjoyed the hike. On the way out we ran into one of the NZ native birds, the kea. Actually quite a few of them. Here's one, trying to untie Sharon's shoes so he can fly off with them. They are a lot of fun to watch. Very intelligent and curious.
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Here he is after one of mine. I could lift him off the ground, he was so into my shoes..
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I took a shot of this guy simply because the contrast between his outfit and ours (and most of the other people) there is so great. He was smoking a cigarette and looking like he just walked out of a las Vegas lounge, but he seemed to be having as good a time as anyone. All of us looked like we were about to set off for the South Pole and this guy looked like he just finished a high stakes poker game. He was oblivious to the weather. You don't need the gear to have a good time..
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That night we camped in a parking area near Magnusen Lake, which is the place to get "the shot" of Mt. Cook of that is what you want. We could see Mt. Cook, but the weather was 'not fine'..
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After getting to our camp site I drove out along the Cook River to Gillespie's Beach. This is one of the places I wish I had spent more time photographing. It was a very cool long flat beach. Oh well, maybe another time..
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30 Nov 2004
This morning we drive just a short distance further north on NZ6, to another glacier, Franz Josef Glacier. This is only about 20km up the coast, and it was nice to not do a whole lot of driving first thing. Far more people visit Franz Josef, and there are organized hikes up onto the glacier itself. You can also get helicopter charters to take you very high up onto the glacier for hiking in the snow and ice. We were going to do this, but the weather was again 'not fine' so we didn't.
Here is a shot on the hike out to the glacier:
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It's very difficult to appreciate the scale of all this just from photos, or in fact while there. You have to get right up close to something to really see how large it is. This next shot shows again that there is water water everywhere..
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Again, lots of milky gray glacier melt water, full of pulverized granite.
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Close up to the glacier itself. The glacier has retreated quite a bit in the last 200 years, and there are markers along the 3km hike out to the glacier showing where the glacier was at known points in the past.
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There are organized hikes onto the glacier here, but we did not do this.
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After this long hike out and back we got in the campers and continued north to the town of Hokitika and the Pancake Rocks, in Paparoa National Park. All of the next 4 shots are of Pancake Rocks, which is only one of the many features of this very large park. These are very interesting and very "photogenic" rock formations, one of many things I wish we had had better weather for. You can't really tell from the next few snaps, but it was raining the entire time we were there. One of many places I would like to see again.
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More again later, in part 3 ..