Tag Archives: Wanaka

Wanaka to Franz Joseph

Although the day started bright and sunny, by the time we’d ‘broken camp’ and got on the road the clouds were shrouding the mountains – and as we were in the mountains that meant that we were in the clouds.  In other words it was raining; which was a pity really because with 6,000 ft peaks all around us I’m sure that the scenery would have been spectacular on a sunny day.  Scenery aside there’s not much of interest on the drive north from Wanaka towards the coast – in point of fact, with two notable exceptions there’s not much of anything between Wanaka and Hokitika (420km)  where we expect to be tomorrow night.  What, I hear you ask, are the two exceptions? I’ll tell you ………..sandflies and glaciers!

I’m not entirely sure why they’re called sandflies.  The fact is that that they seem to be perfectly at home just about anywhere on the West Coast of New Zealand, just so long as there are people to bite.  Forgive me, but I’m doing the species a bit of a disservice; the fact is that whilst the males are annoying but harmless the females are never happier than when they’re drawing blood……….any similarity to humankind is, of course, purely natural.

We stopped for our daily constitutional at the Fox Glacier.  It’s really peculiar to be able to drive/walk in the space of a few minutes from what is in effect a temperate rainforest to the foot of a glacier, albeit glaciers that shrink year on year – both the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers have receded by about 3km since they were first seen by Captain Cook in the late 18th century.  As we stood at the foot of the glacier great lumps of ice about the size of a small car were being washed down the glacial river towards the sea whilst a man in an enormous, caterpillar tracked, digger was trying to move boulders around the valley bottom in an attempt to channel the river along a particular route.  In terms of scale it looked like a Tonka toy trying to move the whole of Chesil Beach – I imagine he must be paid by the hour.

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Te Anau to Wanaka

Today was mainly a travelling day and because of the geography it meant re-tracing our steps out of Fiordland, through Kingston again, back past Queenstown and then north to Wanaka.  We paused in Kingston to take in the Kingston Flyer, which is supposed to have a classic steam engine running on 14 km of track.  Sadly it looks like the Flyer’s days are numbered; the only engines and rolling stock we saw had obviously not moved for many months and according to the owner of the local coffee shop they’ve run out of cash and are looking for a buyer – fancy a business opportunity Jamie?

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More spectacular scenery and wonderful views and then, in the middle of nowhere, a couple of English classic cars – an E-Type and an XK150 sat outside a bar/restaurant in the back end of nowhere looking like a million dollars.  We’d come across something similar on the Otago Peninsular when we’d run into (not literally) a group of English registered Morgans looking for all the world as though they were on a day trip from Malvern.  It’s obviously the thing to do to ship your classic motor out by container and then tour in the New Zealand sunshine to the admiring glances of the natives and tourists.  If you’ve got it, flaunt it!

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Having splashed out on posh campsites and boat trips over the past few days we’re saving a few dollars this evening by ‘wildcamping’ on a Department of Conservation site to the west of Wanaka.  It might be short on amenities, but not on views …….. a 45 minute hike up past Diamond Lake brought us to yet another impressive viewpoint; unfortunately we’ve now completely run out of superlatives.

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