We were relieved to once again behind the wheel, in total control of where and when we would go. With the long evenings of spring, we still had about 3 hours of daylight to make the hour-long drive to Wanaka, check in to our hotel and grab some dinner.
Perhaps it was this sense of relief that drove our thorough enjoyment of our short time in Wanaka. We took the back road to get there (keep in mind that the highways don’t differ much from the back roads), taking us through the dry hills and over a low pass, then gliding us down into a valley where Wanaka and its glacial lake were situated.
Despite our two rooms being quite far apart, the condo-like hotel was lovely, sitting in the dry grass landscape on the outskirts of the very small city (Alpine resort town is a better descriptor). We headed the 3 miles to the quaint downtown to find dinner at a brew pub overlooking the mountains and lake. According to Dad, this was one of the best dinners and towns on the whole trip.
The next morning we stopped at a cute brunch café in town for a round of yummy scrambled eggs, bacon, thick rye toast and Americanos. Then we donned our sunglasses and whipped out the map for our big drive to the glaciers on a beautiful clear and sunny day.
About 20 minutes out of town, I realized I still had my hotel keycard. Then I realized we hadn’t checked out of the hotel. In our haste to get moving, and with the decentralized, exterior-entry set-up of our lodging, it didn’t occur to us to stop at registration on our way out.
We didn’t have a cell phone, and let’s face it – New Zealand is pretty sparse. Gas stations are pretty spread apart, and they all look like they’re from the 1950s. It was questionable whether they’d have a pay phone.
Fortunately we were still in tourist territory, and we came upon a repair shop/gas station in just a few minutes. Through an ESP group vote, it became clear that I was the one who would go seek the phone. So I grabbed the keycard (printed with the phone number) and went inside to see what kind of communication device I could find.
A skinny but sweet teenage grease monkey – clearly a member of the gas station’s dynasty – lumbered in from the shop to see what I needed. I explained the problem, and he handed me the cordless landline phone and said to have at it. And no, I didn’t owe him anything for the call.
In the end, the hotel said it was no problem, we didn’t need to turn in the keys, and we were all set because we’d pre-paid.
Onwards! It was a gorgeous day for a drive, and though we were ultimately crossing a pass, the “mountains” were low and there was no traffic. We stopped at a roadside campsite to take a 5-minute hike along the brook and use the facilities, then later stopped at a visitor center very near the coast to see what kind of information we could find. Mostly we found that the water fountain could launch a sneak attack on a person 5 feet away, if they were standing in the right place. There weren’t any McDonalds to be found, so we had lunch in the car, consisting of peanut butter and jelly on pita with a side of trail mix.
A few hours later we reached the turn-off for Fox Glacier, which took us a couple miles off the highway on a windy road through the trees to one of the lookout points (and hiking trails). Unlike the others in the car, I’d never seen a glacier before and didn’t remember much from science class. We took the “short loop” trail to the look-out, which was a path with rock/dirt steps to a clearing in the trees. The glacier was still pretty far off, but we could see the characteristic blue glacial ice with the help of our field glasses and zoom lens. We could see itsy bitsy bug-like people in a line hiking across it. Read more about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Glacier.
We stopped for a disappointing ice cream bar at the general store in the pit-stop town of Fox Glacier, where the beautiful sunny day fed my desire to take a helicopter flight over the glacier. After all, it was the day before my birthday – a fitting present, no? We stopped in the store-fronts of two different operators, and they could indeed get us on that day, but it was still over $200/person for 30 minutes. As we ate our ice cream in the sun at a public picnic table, an Australian woman raved about their short ride. But we ultimately decided to forego the cost. (Only with slight regret. But I have no regrets about skipping the hike ON the glacier – that looked like a lot of work.)
By that time it was mid-afternoon, and we still had Franz Josef glacier on our itinerary. And we wanted to take a hike. It took less than an hour to get there, and once turned into the park and took a windy road a couple miles into the trees, we parked and started our hike across what appeared to be a huge dry riverbed up to the face of the glacier. It took about 45 minutes to cross the wasteland, and we kept our eye on the teeny people in the distance hiking down the face. It was roped off pretty far from the face to keep people from being injured in rock slides, but it was interesting to see all that dirt and debris up close. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Glacier.
That night we stayed in a 2-bedroom townhouse in the town of Franz Josef, where we made pasta for dinner and caught up on laundry in the guest laundry room right next door.
Our task the next day was to drive a few hours north to Greymouth so we could catch the TranzAlpine train across the island to Christchurch. The drive started with lots of twists and turns as it alternated between mountain valleys and coastline. Upon emerging from one valley, we were greeted with a beach that had thousands of rock piles! We didn’t leave our mark, but we enjoyed seeing memorials of others’ trips (with name and date).
It was time for lunch when we reach non-descript Greymouth, and fortunately there was a McDonalds within walking distance of the train station where we returned the car (could we have possibly eaten anywhere else?) We returned to the station with plenty of time to spare, only to learn that the train was over 45 minutes late.
The train was quite comfortable, and they had ice cream at a snack bar on board, so I was obviously content. About half-way through the trip, Dad struck up a conversation with the two couples sitting across the aisle, who turned out to be farmers from near Brisbane. (We ran into them the next day in Christchurch.)
The four-hour journey was pleasant, and after taking a cab from the train station to our hotel in downtown Christchurch, we checked in, sat around, and headed out for my birthday dinner.
gallopingnelly
