Traveling Beyond the Postcard
Sometimes getting lost is the very best thing...
22 April 2016
Chris arrived after breakfast to be our tour guide for the day. He took us back to the Mount John Observatory for a daytime look and a view of the “big telescope” called the MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics).
The drive along Highway 8 from Tekapo to the Sir Edmond Hillary Alpine Center in Mount Cook Village is very scenic. This side of the mountain is dry and the landscape is more scrubby, similar to a California landscape. It is quite beautiful in it’s way and very dramatic.
We stopped at the Blue Lakes car park about eight kilometers east of Mount Cook Village. Chris and I hiked up to the lookout. There are a series of stairs leading up to the lookout area making it easier for tourist to view; although it is a bit of climb. I had to stop to take a few pictures (had absolutely nothing to do with needing a breather!).
The Blue Lakes are actually green. There is a sign that explains that the lakes were formed by the Tasman Glacier, and at the time of their naming were still fed by the clean, clear glacial waters. The Tasman Glacier has now receded significantly and the lakes are only fed by rain water. The rain water is much warmer than the glacial water and so algae grows making the lakes green.
As for the glacier, it looked very dirty around the lake and is shrinking rapidly as are all of the worlds glaciers. About 14,500 years ago, Tasman Glacier was 85 kilometers long with 1,500-meter deep ice at the location of Tasman Glacier View. By 1890, the glacier was 29 kilometers long, with 880-meter deep ice in this location. In 1990, the glacier was 26 kilometers long. It measured 24 kilometers long in 2011 and is retreating by 480 to 820 meters per year. It is expected to be 20 kilometers long by 2027.
We drove on up to the Hermitage Hotel and the Sir Edmond Hillary Alpine Center where we had lunch before heading back to Tekapo.
As we arrived back close to town the sun was setting and the light over Lake Pukaki was amazing. We stopped and waited. It was so beautiful!
We ordered take out from the Japanese restaurant in Tekapo because we could not get a table (for the second night in a row). Chris picked the food up for us and we enjoyed the evening at our little cottage. Leaving the following morning we bid farewell to Chris. It was sad to say goodbye; he was a wonderful host and we enjoyed his company so much!
The following morning we stopped down the road from our cottage so that I could take a couple of shots of the Church of the Good Shepherd. It was not early enough that the place was not full of tourists which made getting a shot without loads of people in it difficult but I was luckier that I thought I would be.
Today we will drive to Christchurch, our last stop on this lovely trip. We have splurged on a luxury room and are looking forward to a bit of posh!
21 April 2016
We left Dunedin, making our way to Lake Tekapo where we will be spending a few days. Our route will be following the coast north to Omaru and then heading inland toward Duntroon to see the cave paintings and the Elephant Rocks.
Anzac Day (Australia New Zealand Army Corps), a national holiday, is Monday April 25. While in Dunedin, we watched a documentary in which Sam Neill discusses his family history and the war (WWI). It shows him touching his grandfather’s name on a war monument. As we drove north on Highway 1, we passed through a little town called Waikouaiti. Lynnette said “Hey, isn’t that the war memorial Sam Neill visited?” We turned the car around, sure enough!
Anzac Memorial in Waikouaiti
I had been looking forward to photographing the Moraki Boulders, knowing that we would not get there in good light but hoping for the tide to be out. The tide was indeed out but the boulders were covered with swarms of tourists. It was hopeless! As I stood waiting for the people on the rocks pictured below to finish with their selfies and wacky pictures, the next group approached. I asked them to wait just a minute in order to get the picture below without people standing atop them. You can find many beautiful pictures of the rocks on Google. Regrettably, you will not see one here. We had a coffee and lunch at the cafe there at the Moraki Boulders Visitors Center before continuing on our way.
Moraki Boulders
Heading north from here our next stop was Oamaru, know for it’s steampunk festival. We stopped briefly at “Steampunk HQ” for a look. It was fun, the best part was “the portal”, a mirrored room, floor to ceiling, that goes dark and then flashes lights that change color. It was a wondrous experience that gave us a bit of vertigo, but very fun!
Traveling along Highway 83 toward Duntroon we noticed the landscape changing. Suddenly there were the most beautiful sandstone hillsides on our left, the Waitaki River on our right. We turned off of the Highway onto Livingstone-Duntroon road and very shortly arrived at our next stop. There is a stairway up to a fenced off cave like cliff face. Here there are centuries old Maori rock paintings. Unfortunately there is also graffiti explaining the need for the fence. Many fossils have been found in this region.
A bit further down the road are the Elephant Rocks, located on a private farm. They have kindly put a gate in so that people can wander through their pasture land to view these amazing rock formations that appear to go on for miles. This site was a filming location for the Chronicles of Narnia. The pictures I took just don’t capture the wonder of this place.
Still a long way to Tekapo we made our way back to Highway 83 and continued on our journey. The sun started getting low in the sky making the landscape even more beautiful, illuminating it with that lovely warm light. As we passed by Lake Benmore we had to stop to enjoy the beauty of the moment and get a few photos. There is a bike and walking trail below where we stood with several people out enjoying the late afternoon beauty.
We arrived at Lake Tekapo about dusk. We contacted Chris Murphy, a friend of Lynnette’s family here in New Zealand, who was generous and kind to host two old gals for our time here. Chris works at the Mt John Observatory. We had an 8:00 pm tour scheduled and Chris went along with us as a special tour guide.
The Observatory is run by the University of Canterbury and is one of three in the world with “gold” status from the International Dark Sky Reserve. The little town of Tekapo has no white lights. All of the outdoor lighting in the town is legislated to be amber which, similar to red, does not cause the same amount of light pollution. Also the lights have little “caps” on them to keep the light down on the ground where it’s needed. New Zealand’s largest telescopes are here and the view was awe inspiring.
The top three most awe inspiring sights tonight, in order of preference, were The Jewel Box (NCG 4755) AMAZING!, Saturn with it’s rings, and a star cluster that is almost as old as our universe (wow!!) The memory of this experience will stand out as one of my most cherished! It is humbling and thought provoking to be reminded of our insignificance in our ancient, vast, wondrous universe.
19 April 2016
The road to Dunedin consisted of pasture land, cows, sheep, deer, and more of the same. We arrived in Dunedin without taking a single picture. We drove from the west coast to the east along State Highway 94 to Highway 1. About midway in our trip Highway 94 runs between the towns of Gore and Clinton. We saw a sign shortly after passing through Gore that marked this section of the road as the Presidential Highway. Pretty funny!
The following day, we took a railway/bus tour of Taieri Gorge and the Otago Peninsula. The driver picked us up at our hotel and told us we only two on the bus tour for the day – we would have him all to ourselves!
The Dunedin train station is really beautiful. Construction of the station was completed in 1906 and was once a busy place for commercial and industrial transport. Now it is only used for the sightseeing tours. The interior looks very art deco.
The train itself is very cool, the car we were in was built in 1934 as a replica of a 1907 design. The inside of the car was all polished wood and the carpet was vintage looking. The seats and the table were more modern but it still had a vintage feeling. The train winds through the steep beautiful gorge stopping once or twice along the way. It was a four hour trip reversing back through the same track.
Our driver Chris fetched us from the station and took us on a site seeing tour of the Otago Peninsula. We visited a shallow water area where there are a number of bird species. This area is loaded with small blue crabs and cockles. He told us about the Bluff Oysters from the area that are in season now. I wanted to try them so on the way back to the hotel he took us to a wonderful fish monger where I was able to get a small container. Lynnette wouldn’t try them, said they looked like snot. I say they are wonderful, like a clean bright breath of fresh salty sea air! We made several stops to take photos during our outing with Chris. It was a very good day.
The sea lions in New Zealand are one of the rarest species and only found in the Otago and Southland areas. Their numbers are declining because their breeding cycle in Antarctica coincides with the squid fishing season. The trawling method used snags pregnant females killing the mother and her unborn cub. They are quite docile and did not pay us much mind as long as we kept our distance.
Chris has a very strong Scottish accent but was born in New Zealand. Scottish migration to New Zealand dates back to the earliest European colonization. There are many Scottish named cities and Dunedin has named it’s streets after those in Edinburgh. The Scottish colonists formed societies to preserve their culture and you find many Scottish accents on the South Island in particular.
We ended the evening by walking a few blocks to a fish shop. We had dinner and walked back to the hotel in a misty rain. Dunedin is a college town, and there were many young people out and about. The University of Otago at Dunedin is New Zealand’s oldest university and is well renowned for the quality of research that is done here and it is quite beautiful as well.
18 April 2016
Today we went on tour of Doubtful Sound. A driver picked up at the hotel at 8:30 am. We had a 20 minute drive to Lake Manapouri where we took an hour boat ride across the lake. While waiting to board the boat at Lake Manapouri we we saw HUGE trout swimming about the dock . We learned that the lake is also home to longfin eel that the Maori people fish but the lake is protected from commercial fishing. It was a beautiful ride if a bit cold as we set up top!
We pulled ashore at the Manapouri Power Station for an hour bus ride to Doubtful Sound. This was a beautiful drive! There were so many beautiful photo opportunities but the driver only stopped once!
Photo Stop on the way to Doubtful Sound
The 3 hour boat ride through the sound, out to the mouth of the Tasmin Sea and back was beautiful. We were fortunate to have good weather with only a smattering of rain for a short time. Doubtful Sound is actually a fiord. There were tall mountain cliffs covered in lush tropical vegetation with many waterfalls. The boat had three levels each with large windows all around for clear viewing. The water deep in the sound was fairly calm but it got quite choppy as we approached the sea. Interestingly the top layer of the waterway is fresh water while the bottom is sea water; two distinct ecosystems. The top layer of water comes from the runoff and the rivers that pour into it from the many waterfalls. The salt water and the fresh do not mix.
By the time we made the return trip down the mountain, across Lake Manapouri and back to our hotel we were completely knackered!
Lake Manapouri on the return
17 April 2016
We felt like Wanaka might deserve more than just an overnight stay but we really didn’t have time to explore it. It is a pretty little resort community with a young vibe. It also has a wine region. I had a glass of the local wine with dinner that was very good; better than most of the Marlborough wines I’ve tried and less expensive as well. We left Wanaka taking a scenic route on Cardrona Valley Road which took us though some lovely scenery and eventually to the historic gold mining town Arrowtown.
Arrowtown is a picturesque place that is apparently THE place to go on a Sunday morning; it was packed! The streets of the old town are lined with little shops and eateries. We got lucky with a place to park and did some looking around before eating lunch. The place we ate had a variety of items but we both chose pizza. Lynnette was really disappointed with her Pepperoni pizza which had salami on it – NOT pepperoni. It seems that this is done here often; not sure if they don’t know the difference or what.
We left Arrowtown and continued onto Highway 6 which goes over the mountains following along Lake Wakatipu. As we approached the part of this road know as the Devils Staircase we were stopped, with about 10 cars in front of us. The roadway worker said traffic was stopped in both directions while an automobile accident was cleared. It took about an hour for the road to reopen. I took some pictures of the lake to pass the time and to try to forget how badly I needed to pee. As the time dragged on it became urgent. The day before we had a takeout coffee. I had rinsed out and saved the cups thinking we might want to make coffee to go. It turns out the the cup came in handy for other purposes! Yikes!
View of Lake Wakatipu where we stopped on Highway 6
As we passed the accident there were two vehicles involved. One car was missing the entire drivers side of the car; no doors. It looked really bad and we did not see how the driver could have survived. It was very sobering and we felt a bit disturbed for the remainder of the day. Later we found that no one had perished but learned that there are numerous accidents in New Zealand because of foreign drivers.
As we passed through the countryside on our way to Te Anau the landscape was covered in the native Red Tussock grass and littered with small boulders. We commented that this country side looked very much like some we had seen in Lord of the Rings.
We arrived in Te Anau at dusk and checked into the Distinction Hotel. After getting unpacked we decided we were too tired to bother going somewhere for dinner and instead ate crackers, cheese, apples and other finger foods that we had with us. We turned on the television and found the first Lord of the Rings movie playing – cool!! As we watched the credits we discovered that we had been correct and part of it had indeed been filmed in the area we had just passed through. As it turned out, they were playing all three movies; we watched the second and a bit of the third before falling to sleep.
13 April 2016
A few miles south of Hokitika we stopped to see Lake Mahinapua. There is a short drive down a beautiful road canopied with a lush growth of trees and ferns. This road leads to a parking lot for a small campground on the lake. It was lovely and well worth the short detour.
As we traveled along Highway 6 heading south toward Franz Josef Glacier the country was changing as we went through mountains and rolling hills with pastures going in and out from the coastline. The roads are well paved but only two lanes, frequently narrow and largely unmarked. There are many single track bridges over the numerous waterways that run through the country. There was one bridge, that in addition to narrowing down to a single lane, also had a railroad track in the middle of it! We assume that traffic in both directions should give way to the train!
The water of the Whataroa River (pronounced Fat-a-roa) is aqua blue because it’s glacial run off. So glad there was a place to pull off the road!
Our last stop before driving into Franz Josef Glacier was Okarito Lagoon. It’s lovely but we noticed that there were some flies that hopped in the car with us and we had a few bites.
Arriving at Franz Josef just after sunset, we checked into our room and went to Alice May, the restaurant next door, for dinner. It looks like an old English Pub. The inside was wood and there were farm tools and old fashioned household items adorning the walls. It had started to drizzle and the evening air was cold. They seated us in front of the tiled fireplace; very cozy! The food was good and we enjoyed the evening. Lynnette was starting to feel a cold coming on so we went to bed fairly early.
Our Room at 10 Cottage, Franz Joseph Glacier
14 April 2016
There are loads of hikes short and long in this area, it is beautiful. There are several companies that offer helicopter rides over the glacier. When you are out on the trails the helicopter noise detracts from the ambiance a bit. I went on a short hike not far from the hotel. It was beautiful but I encountered something puzzling along one trail. There was a sign warning of explosives. Do I continue on, I thought? It turns out that they are left over from the mining days in the area and were not removed “just in case”!!!
15 April 2016
We drove to the base of the glacier where I hiked about 20 minutes to a lookout area to get pictures of the glacier. This area is so very beautiful! A trampers paradise for sure!
Next we took a short drive on a the beautiful, narrow road in toward Fox glacier to a lookout point. The road ends at a parking lot at the start of several trails where trampers can leave their cars. It’s great that New Zealand has made many of these national treasures also accessible for those that can’t tramp in. We had lovely views!
Fox Glacier
Our next stop was Lake Matheson (also know as Mirror Lake). There is a gift shop and a restaurant there. Lynnette had a pot of tea hoping to help clear her congestion while I took the walk out to the lake lookout. What a lovely walk! About 10 minutes in there was an area full of large birds making a ruckus and flying from tree to tree. I watched them for awhile, wishing for a telephoto lens! There are some lovely pictures of Lake Matheson on the web. When the water is still you get a perfect reflection of the mountains in the water. Alas, it was not still as it was afternoon but I will enjoy the pictures and the memories of our time there!
Lynnette had noticed a place on the map called Bruce Bay so we decided to stop and get some photos there for my husband Bruce. The weather and the beach were beautiful and we had some good music playing in the car. Lynnette decided to leave the car door open to hear the music while she took some pictures. This is where we really got acquainted with the little flies that the people here call sand flies. When we got back into the car it was full of the little devils! We spent the next two hours making sure that we were the last meal for as many as possible. (They are like the midges in the Hebrides – we both look like we have chicken pox!) Itchy and Scratchy for the rest of trip!
Continuing south on highway 6 to Wanaka took us between Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea. As we approached the town of Wanaka the landscape changed dramatically. Left behind was the lush tropical looking foliage and tall mountains of Franz Joseph and Lake Matheson, replaced by rocky rolling hills covered with native grasses and completely different vegetation.
We reached the town of Wanaka at sunset and checked into the Manuka Crescent Hotel. We ate dinner at The Trout Bar along the lake. We were hungry and the food was good. They had upgraded our room and so we had separate sleeping areas. We crashed and everyone got a good nights sleep.
Traveling Beyond the Postcard 