31 May - 3 June 2012
On my second to last journey in NZ, I had a bucket list of
things to do- see the glaciers, hike through Abel Tasman National Park, see the infamous Pancake
Rocks and then stay in Nelson for a night. What I had wanted to see, doesn’t
nearly add up to what I actually saw....
And thus begins my trip with Amanda Wescott, Laura Nay and Samantha Romkey.
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| Amanda and Laura pumped for the roadtrip! |
Stop 1: Wanaka
Wanaka is a cute little ski town above the magnificent
Queenstown. They’re actually pretty similar- both have a cute city centre, awesome
lake/mountain views, and surrounding ski resorts. We had to do the usual
grocery shopping before the big trip, and as we were leaving towards the
glaciers we saw the cutest children’s park of puzzling world and got a quick
pic.
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| Wanaka Lake |
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| Puzzling World |
As we left Wanaka, I was so excited because for the past 4 months I had
traveled on the same route that my mom and I had done in January, and now I was
going over completely new territory. The drive was amazing because we were
forced to stop as we were driving under 200m waterfalls, cascading of the
forested mountaintops.
As we drove over all of the bridges the water was
crystal clear and had a picture perfect mountain view.
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| views during the drive |
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| Reached the west coast right before dark! |
Finally, it got dark
around 5:30pm, and I still had an hour left of driving.
Stop 2: Glaciers
We arrived at Fox glacier first, spent the night in the
really awesome hostel that was pretty equivalent to the hotels my mom and I had
been staying at but instead of $50pp, I paid $20….awesome deal. Driving up to
the glaciers was actually really funny, because you felt like you were in a
tropical jungle, except the temperature was close to freezing.
The glacier
walks were really neat, at Fox Glacier you could get much closer to the glacier
than Franz Josef glacier, but on the way to Franz were really awesome waterfalls.
They both had their pros/cons. You can do glacier hikes as well, but it’s
pretty expensive and we were short on time. The Franz Josef glacier actually
doesn’t do glacier hikes anymore, as of this season, because the glacier is
moving so much per day that it’s become unpredictable and unstable.
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| Fox Glacier |
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| Fox Glacier and Amanda |
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| Fox Glacier and Laura and Me, hiking over a little stream |
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| Chilling by a waterfall on the way to Franz Josef Glacier |
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| Franz Josef in the far back... not as cool as Fox |
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| Success in seeing both of the glaciers!! |
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| Mirror Lake |
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| Reflecting on how great life is... |
In the middle of the glaciers, Amanda and I wanted to be
dorky geologists and hike up to an outcrop of the Alpine Fault that runs
straight across the south island of NZ, right into Christchurch, the epicenter
of all the earthquakes… As we were walking along the rocks, we realized it was
a lot further than we thought and the rocks weren’t stable around the huge
river…so it was pretty dangerous, and of course I’m too clumsy to put myself in
that danger haha. Plus it probably wasn’t worth it to the other girls to hike
so far to see a literal rock that has a line through it. It would have been
cool to see it though….oh well! One more reason to come back to NZ, right?
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| Laura and I looking for some alternate path to the fault.. ended up soaking my shoes..fail. |
Stop 3: Natural Hot Springs
So Amanda had this little book from her flatmate Mitchell,
and it ended up being the most awesome guide during our journeys. I had that
short list of things to do, but I am so glad we found these really obscure
places that the book suggested we go to. So on our way to Pancake Rocks, it
told us that along this river we would find this unmarked road, follow it until
it dead ends, get out of your car, put your bathing suits on (might I add it’s
still around 40F/5C), walk along the river through a little forest, over a
bridge, around a farm road, through a little crack in the trees, cross the
river and then magically you should spot steam coming from the rocks/water. And
just as the book said, we found exactly that…. And a huge swarm of sandflies.
Trying to get away from the sandflies, we ran across the river towards the
steam, and the water kept getting warmer and warmer on my feet. Once I got to
the rocks there was already a nice little self-dug hot tub! I immediately
jumped in it, as did everyone else, and relaxed… well, kind of…. The huge swarm
of sandflies was only getting worse, so I decided to cover myself in the sandy
mud that was so warm beneath me :)
It helped for the most part, but I missed my back, so I paid for that a few
days later when I was scratching my back on the car seat the whole drive home.
The natural hot springs are caused by little pillows of lava under ground
causing geothermal energy to rise and heat up the surface, and become a nice
little hot tub for all to share!
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| Amanda chillin' in our little hot tub ;)... there's like 300 sandflies in the pic.. you just can't see them! | | |
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| can't really tell unless you in large the pic, but I have covered my face in mud to ward off sandflies...it worked! |
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| Very obscure location... good job trusty guidebook! |
Stop 4: Swing Bridge
During our drive in the country side...
So on one of our stops, I was reading this awesome guidebook
we inherited from Mitchell, and I read something about a couple swing bridges
near Hokitika. The drive was quite a bit out of the way, which of course the
book told us, but it also said that it was 100% worth it…. Well it definitely
was! We walked the little path to get to it and BAM, not only was there just a
plain, old swing bridge, but the water was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever
seen…and that’s saying a lot! I honestly can’t describe this water, and pictures
really don’t do it justice, but you can at least get a since of I was in such
awe at this water. We were pretty far from the glaciers so I don’t think it was
glacial water…who knows… it was just amazing.
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| seriously... doesn't do it justice.. |
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| Leaning on a swing bridge..probably not the brightest idea haha |
Stop 5: Pancake Rocks
One of the many tourist attractions on the West Coast is
just a bunch of rocks on the coast that look like stacks of pancakes… I’ve hear
they weren’t that cool, but I still wanted to see them. We got there literally
10 minutes before it was completely dark and we walked around this path that
led us to different outlooks over the rocks. Some were kind of lame, but then
we came to this one set of rocks, and because it was high tide, the water was
smashing into the rocks and reaching heights of about 70m… so that was pretty
cool.
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| Pancake rocks! Hard to tell that they look like pancakes, but up close they really do |
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| Tried to capture the huge blow hole... doesn't do it justice. |
Then it got dark and we still had 3-4 hrs of driving till Abel Tasman
National Park. The roads were empty and foggy, and of course we had no cell
phone service. I started to get worried that we were going to die… either of
going off a cliff or because a ghost will step out into the middle of the road and make me run into a tree… no thanks to
Amanda telling me ghost stories. I was intrigued, I must say, but beyond freaked
out! Then came a bunny rabbit, that I swear wanted to get run over! It jumped from left to right 5 times before it realized I could break no faster and jumped into the bush...so smart. Kiwi's have told me that they purposely swerve into rodents like rabbits and possums haha, but I'm too nice and care about my car too much to do that ;)
Stop 6: Abel Tasman National Park
Woke up.. booked a water taxi to take us to the beginning of
our hike. Passed an apple rock, seals, and beautiful golden beaches.
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| Apple split rock..in the summer a lot of people swim to it and get neat pictures standing inside of it |
Abel
Tasman is known to be the sunniest region in New Zealand, and luckily for us
(because we were in desperate need of sun after living in Dunedin), the sun was
shining bright all day. We hiked for about 4 hours but we did a lot of stopping
at beaches, lookout points, and rivers along the way. The hike wasn’t hard per
say… but there were a lot of ups and downs, and I was definitely out of breath
after every hill. All in all it was worth it, and I’m glad we didn’t do a three-day
hike because I feel like we saw it all in one day.
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| how we disembarked onto Abel Tasman National Park |
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| Beginning the hike, super pumped! Little did I know that within a couple steps would be a huge hill! |
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| doin' our thing ;) |
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| Golden Beach :) |
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| some random water taxi.. just dropping some people of to hike around the park |
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| Lookout point along the hike |
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| Me, being an awesome friend for those who didn't wear waterproof shoes hahaha |
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| neat things along the hike. |
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| Lunch Break on the beach....more sandfly bites >:( |
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| and more lunch |
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| Yay! another swing bridge... my favorite! |
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| Miss ya buddy! REAL starfish just chillin on the beach..mostly dead because of the crazy drastic tides |
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| And I miss you the most MOM! |
Stop 7: Nelson
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| Night time when we arrived :) |
I really wanted to see Nelson, even though there wasn’t
anything specific to see there. I found this hostel on Hostel World called Paradise,
which was a really neat hostel. Highly Recommended. There were little huts you
stayed in, with an ensuite, pool/hot tub, sauna and free breakfast….can’t go
wrong with that.
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| Pool area with hot tub and sauna on the left side of the pool |
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| cute little room with a double on the top bunk..which no one took while I was in the sauna.. lucky day for me :) |
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| awesome little area...too bad it was freezing cold! |
We met up for dinner with Bryce Poulin, and ate at the Pizza
Bar. OK.. being in NZ I have not had the best food experience.. some things are
good and some stuff is just eh.. and of course they don’t have Mexican, so
nothing can compare….BUT I swear this is the BEST pizza I have EVER had, even
better than the infamous NY pizza. Something about the spices and possibly the fact that I was starving.. I’m
not sure what made it so special. Then we all looked at the menu and saw
CHOCOLATE PIZZA, then looked up and smiled at each other in unison haha.
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| Before | |
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| 5 minutes later.. maybe even 3 minutes |
Ingredients: Pizza base, chocolate, banana, ice cream, coconut shavings and a touch of cinnamon!
There was also this market that they have every weekend,
Saturday is supposedly better, but we were only there on Sunday…it was cool but
kind of just a garage sale, with some really interesting fried bread. Then we
were on our way to the East Coast to drive home through Kaikoura, my favorite
whale town in NZ.
Stop 8: Wine Tour
Got my 4th ticket in NZ, versus zero in the US.
They’re so strict on speeding here… I was going 8mph over and got a
ticket…never once have they just given me a warning like good ole’ Texan cops.
We stopped at Brancott estates, the largest winery in NZ, with many exports to
the US too. The wine was really awesome! I really liked these two:
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| you can find it in the US as Brancott Estates: Marborough |
As we were leaving wine country, we came into this town
where there were cops on both sides of the road…breathalyzer tests. I
immediately freaked out and turned down a dead in road, where a cop ended up
following me. He came up to the window asking what I was doing.. Amanda told
him we were lost and were stopping to look at directions… The problem is that
there was no alternate highway or road so it’s kind of impossible to get lost
haha so being me.. I blurted “ok! OK! I had a glass of wine!” (I was so nervous
because I didn’t know the drinking and driving laws in NZ, Monika had told me
that in Slovakia they have an absolute zero tolerance, and I had never looked
up the law here). He said I was fine since I was 20, I’m allowed 2 glasses… and
he just thought I was a really funny American, so there was no problem what so
ever! Back on the road… we stopped in Kaikoura where the seal pups are now
chilling under the waterfall that was once empty in the summertime.
There were
also orcas, 5 sperm whales and dolphins out in the ocean today seen by the
whale company where we took a pit stop. Our final stop was right above
Christchurch where we stopped at the Mud House for more wine!! And there were my other favorites:
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(bringing this one back to the US)
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All in all I had an amazing trip, got everything off my
bucket list before I leave NZ...except for snowboarding. Thanks so much for an awesome trip Sam, Amanda
and Laura!!! I’m going to miss you guys!
