New Zealanders love giving things humourous names (see above)
We left Queenstown among beautiful weather (again!) and made the once again spectacular journey back up to Wanaka and then over the Southern Alps to the West coast. It is really lake country in this area and the routes are dotted with places to get out and stretch your legs and take another gazillion photos. Once again the scenery turned from brown grassland around Queenstown, to more greener areas around Wanaka, then past the lakes there was more forest - some of it rainforest and some of it more normal woods, but the mountains were green rather than brown grass.
The lakes provide breathtaking views and stunning reflections and it is really getting to the point where I'm running out of good adjectives for all this lovely countryside!! Once we got over the the West coast and started heading north the beaches provided a completely new stunner for us. The terrain over on the West coast is very rugged again and bears the brunt of the bad weather from the sea. The trees give a whole new meaning to windswept and because of the proliferation of sand flies (nasty biting flies, a bit like mozzies) there is very little settlement here.
We did find one beach which was a mixture of sand, beautiful rounded pebbles and the kind of driftwood that could easily be shown in art galleries and sold for extortionate prices! Luckily the sand flies didn't really get us although we did decide to eat our vegemite and crisp sarnies in the car! We passed a salmon farm and got some delicious smoked salmon pate and headed up the windy coastal road to the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. We drove up to Fox and touched the icy meltwater, but you can't actually get close to the glacier at this point.
Beware of avalanches, surf and people drowning
Instead, the next day, we went on a glacier walking tour and, armed with crampons and warm gloves, we had a 3-hour walk among the glacier. If you've never done this it doesn't sound very exciting but it is something else to wander about on ice so blue it looks like sky (unfortunately though the sky was a rather murky shade of grey that day!). To make it really special we even smuggled a small bottle of bubbly to eat with our vegemite and crisp sarnies for lunch - mmmMMmmmm, the ONLY way to enjoy glaciers darling!
Admittedly, the journey wasn't too hard as the guides carve out steps with their pick axes as you go along, and constant trips leave a myriad of previously cut steps, so the going isn't too tough but you still get a great sense of adventure. Quite an exhausting day but rounded off nicely by a visit to our campsite's outdoor hot spa (jacuzzi) which was a lovely hot bath to soothe our aches and pains. If you add the fact the campsite was actually situated among virgin rainforest as well it must rate pretty highly as one of the best we've stayed in!
Whistle while you work lalala lala
No comments:
Post a Comment