Blogs from Wanaka, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 40

The next day I travelled to Wanaka to see, amongst other things, the Warbirds over Wanaka airshow. We stopped off at Lake Matheson along the way.... read more

So with no water on the West Coast, I elected to boogie on down south. I did drive by touristing of both glaciers. The weather wasn't really worth spending lots of time. It wasn't raining, just misting and cloudy and bad visibility. But beautiful scenary none the less. The best scenary may have really been between Haast and Wanaka. This drive was just amazing. The drive is through a river valley, with Mt. Aspiring on the right and I have no idea what mountains on the left. At one point I just had to stop taking pictures because I wasn't making any time down the road. I didn't really spend much time in Wanaka, I was on my way to Glenorchy... past Queenstown. But I did stop and go into Puzzle World. This is really cool. ... read more

Getting over my disappointment of Franz Josef was made a little easier by our arrival in Wanaka. The journey from FJ to here went through some of the most goosebump-making scenery I have seen so far in NZ. It is hard to describe and most adjectives and pictures really cannot do it justice, so I don't think I am even going to attempt this challenge. Just take a look at the pics and see what you think. First of all we stopped at Lake Matheson, probably one of the most famous kettle lakes in NZ if not the world. Yes, those kettle lakes don't half get around in these glaciated countries. Again, the weather was not playing ball and the usual glass reflection of Mt Cook and the Fox glacier could not be seen in the ... read more

Have been sampling lots of random activities since I left the Stray bus (maybe those teenagers were a sensible influence after all!). First I went to glaciers and played in big spiky shoes at crawling round and walking on ice. Got a helicopter up there which was also very cool. In Wanaka I've just been going mental and did mountain biking round the lake (soooo beautiful) - the tourists were all pointing at me like I was some some of local mentalist. Then did a bit od walking. Then learnt how to rock climb. This was amazing. I wore my spiderman watch especially and was trying very hard to be as good as spiderman himself, but I think it was more a job of hanging on for dear life. Especially on this massive boulder we had ... read more

Fortunately the latest rips in trousers have not included injuring the body beneath them. My poor Rohans have another rip in the backside from chicken wire on the board walks on Stewart Island (sitting down to try and heave my rucksack back on!). What on earth caused my 'smart' black trousers to rip very embarrasingly I don't know. I thought I was getting smaller not putting on weight....They have been consigned to the textile recycling bin in Dunedin. I hope I didn't walk around too long with them like that. I was giving a lift to a 19 year old Swiss guy that day. He didn't say anything so either he didn't notice or was too embarrassed himself! Anyway, back to putting photos on and catching up. I've walked up the Rob Roy valley today for ... read more