Queenstown to Greymouth

Hard to believe it’s only been 3 days since my mom got here - we’ve done so much already. We spent almost the entire second day driving from Queenstown up to Fox Glacier on the west coast. It’s only about a 5 hour drive normally, but we made a few stops on the way since we had plenty of time to spare. First was in Wanaka at Puzzling World to do some free puzzles in their lobby. Steph had spent some time there while I was doing my first aid course in Wanaka a while back, so she’s been itching to show me one puzzle that she was good at. Afterwards, we picked up lunch at Subway while in town and stopped near the north end of Lake Wanaka to eat on the lake shore. From there it was up and over the Southern Alps towards the coast. Three stops along there: blue pools - crystal clear water with big trout swimming around, Fantail Falls - cascading waterfall, and Thunder Creek falls - a big tall waterfall pictured below.

Thunder Creek Falls

Cameron Flat - one of many great views on our first day's drive

We stopped again when we got to the west coast to do a little walk along the beach. The beaches are nice - soft sand with the occasional groupings of small rocks. We had a good time searching through the rocks looking for greenstone, or pounamu as the Maori call it. This stuff is in every gift shop in New Zealand, and we managed to find lots of rocks that we think are pounamu - they don’t look so green when they dry up. Steph has big plans to bring what appears to be a suitcase full of rocks home and get a rock tumbler and make jewelry from them…

First beach we stopped at

We stayed that night at a ‘holiday park’ (similar to KOA’s in the US) in Fox Glacier township. We didn’t really have much time to do anything that night, so we just made dinner and turned in early because we had a big day planned for the next day.

sunset on our night in Fox

It’s been a while since I’ve been up before dawn, so it was good to experience again what it’s like for all you people with “jobs” back home. It’s not fun as it turns out. Guess you already knew that. Anyways, we had a good reason to get up about an hour before sunrise - we were only minutes away from Lake Matheson, the ‘most photographed lake in New Zealand.” Lake Matheson is popular for two reasons - its mirror-like stillness, and it’s amazing views of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman, New Zealand’s two largest peaks. You can’t go into a gift shop in New Zealand without seeing postcards, paintings, and posters of Lake Matheson. So, we got up and trudged through the darkness to see what the fuss is all about. Turns out we had amazingly clear skies and an even more amazing view from the lake. It was just as advertised - super calm lake with great views of the mountains. If you look at our pictures on Picassa you’ll see we took at least 50 photos, all of which look almost exactly the same. It’s just that photogenic.

Lake Matheson - Mount Cook on right and Mount Tasman on left

But we couldn’t linger for too long as we had a glacier hike scheduled for 9:30. Oh yes, I forgot to mention we’re in Glacier country! (Maybe you could have figured it out from ‘Fox Glacier township’) There are two glaciers here - Fox and Franz Josef. Fox is less crowded but supposed to be as good or better, so we opted for it. The outfitter kitted us up with heavy duty boots, thick wool socks, and crampons for when we got on the ice. We opted for the half day hike of about 4 hours since I had heard it is strenuous getting to and from the glacier. Turns out this wasn’t a great decision for a couple reasons: one, the rest of the clientale are worried about the strenuous hike and therefore old and slow, and two, you really only get to walk up on top of the glacier, peer into a few holes, but don’t really get to see much “blue ice” or other cool ice formations. Still, it was cool to walk out on a glacier and the views were brilliant. Trivia time: Fox and Franz Josef are two of only 11 glaciers in the world that terminate in a temperate rainforest so close to the ocean. It was also interesting to hear about how the glacier goes through cycles of lurching forward then pulling back. Currently it is pulling back, but we’re entering another El Nino cycle which means it will probably start moving forward again. Also, there’s something like 10 billion tons of ice in the glacier. That’s all the facts I’ve got. If you want more, try Google.

Fox Glacier

Steph on ice stairs

After the glacier hike we had lunch and headed north. We didn’t have anything booked and weren’t really sure  where we wanted to go, and ended up picking a town called Hokitika. Not really sure why, maybe because the name sounds cool. More likely because it is famous for it’s pounamu and craft shops, and Steph wanted to shop! We found a dirt cheap hostel to stay in and went searching for more pounamu on the beach. We have lots of rocks now, most of which look pretty gray and boring when their not wet. Hokitika has another nice attraction, one that Steph has been dying to see for some time now - a Gloworm dell. I have no idea why Steph want’s to see glowworms so bad, but I must say they are pretty cool. Once the sun goes down and it gets really dark out, hundreds of little glowworms light up and it looks like stars on the side of this hill. We spent about an hour trying to get a picture of it. This is the best we could get - with a 60 second exposure time.

no, not stars - glowworms!!

This morning we did some browsing of the many craft shops in town. Steph has been searching for a good New Zealand souvenir for us, and ended up buying a painted rock from a South African. It does have kiwis on it, so it is technically New Zealand-y. Today we’re driving up to Greymouth to see the famous pancake rocks of Punakaiki. Not slowing down yet!