Day Ten - Over the Bridges to the Glaciers

It’s a driving day! We slept in a bit, but got packed up a bit before 8 in the morning. We ate a little breakfast downstairs, checked out of our B&B, and were on the road a little while after 8.

Now, as it happens, Queenstown was having a marathon on the exact morning we were planning to drive out. Mom and I have a notorious history with getting trapped by marathons, so I was extremely relieved to be able to get out of Queenstown without any running-related delays.

The next stop on our trip was the Franz Josef glacier, about a 5 hour drive from Queenstown, and we had mapped out a good number of stops along the way to see some of the beautiful scenery and natural landmarks along the west coast of New Zealand. We started by doing some intense switchbacks all the way up and down the Crown Range. When we got to the top we stopped to take a look back at the area since Queenstown only looked like a tiny speck after we got up the peak.

Queenstown is waaaay over there.

We continued on down the mountain to Wanaka and stopped at a little gas station to top off the tank and get some drinks because we were fully expecting gas stations to be few, far between, and expensive on this drive (spoiler: Yes. Yes, they were).

Wanaka is the first stop on the Haast trail that we had mapped out, and the next stop was Lake Hawea. I pulled over and we did a short walk along a roadside ridge to get some spectacular photos of the lake with the southern Alps in the background.

Blue water, rolling green hills, and snowcapped mountains. It’s like New Zealand all in one picture.

We continued on down the road, stopping at the Blue Pools next, which required a 20 min. walk down a well maintained path. The pools were a bit more green than blue (due to the weather apparently), but they were crystal clear and the forest surrounding them was primordial. Literally. The forests here have species of trees that are recognized as being some of the oldest in the fossil record.

Apparently the weather made them a bit more green than blue on the day we visited, but they were still gorgeous.

I’m obsessed with New Zealand ferns.

Back on the road I dodged cyclists while having pull over to let people pass us (I am not driving 100 km/hr on mountain switchbacks). We stopped at the thunder creek falls next and only had to walk a few minutes to see one of the most spectacular waterfalls on the trip (and we saw hundreds yesterday).

New Zealand has SO many waterfalls and this might be the largest one we’ve seen.

And then we drove into a dead zone in which no human seems to live. Mount Aspiring National park is huge and there is nothing out there. If we had an issue, we would have had to cellular-satellite ourselves some help. That probably wouldn’t be able find us.

We stopped at the Haast Township visitor center and then continued on our way to the glacier. The road turned into the western coast road which follows the New Zealand coastline along the Tasman Sea. We paused at the coast, where there was a random snack truck, the only food for miles around.

Extraordinary blue water (even if the clouds rolled in soon after). It started to rain and we decided to try and drive the rest of the way straight through, no stopping for lunch.

The coast road turned into a rainforest road with precariously balanced trees and rocks right above our heads. In a rockslide zone. In the rain. Yep. This is totally safe. We kept driving and the rain finally faded away, so by the time we arrived at Franz Josef at 3:30 it was a sunny day.

Before we got checked into our hotel we hit up the West Coast Wildlife Center to try and see actual kiwis. We had tried in Taronga Zoo, but they are even more secretive than platypus (if that can even be believed). We got a behind the scenes tour and then we were able to see one of the juvenile kiwis in its enclosure. So much larger than you would think!

No photos allowed of the adult kiwis, but we got to see the newly hatched chick on a camera!

They also had five blue penguins so we were able to visit their pool and watch them playing. Very cute and very small! By this time we were exhausted and hungry so we checked into our (enormous) hotel room and walked the block back to the restaurants to have dinner at The Landing. I had a venison meat pie and mom had pasta (both were huge portions that neither of us could finish). We headed back to the hotel to relax and unwind a bit before our rainforest hot tub reservation at 9:30.

We walked up the street to the Waiho hot tubs and were taken back to our private, wood fire heated, rainforest hot tub. It was amazing. We got to sit and relax for an hour in the warm water, which felt great after a day of sitting the in car.

Wood fired hot tub. It was amazing after a long day of driving.

We walked back the short distance to the hotel and when we got changed for bed, mom realized she had accidentally wrapped her suit up in her towel! We ran back to the hot tubs and was able to catch them before they closed!

We both hopped into our enormous king sized beds and fell asleep before our heads hit the pillow. Long day!