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Published: September 4th 2008
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In an effort to get away and enjoy as much of New Zealand as we can during our short stay, we took off for an overnight to Hanmer Springs. It was a five hour drive but we made several stops along the way.
Our first stop was to visit Cookie World. We bought way too many bags of broken cookies and Bumper Bars. They did give us lots to nibble on over the weekend. We then stopped at an outlet mall - our first mall visit and our first outlet store. I think it about did Gregg in - He tolerates shopping on his own, but not with us! We were able to get Syd new ski pants and some ski gloves for her and Graham, before Gregg forced us all back in the car.
We arrived at Hanmer Springs mid afternoon. Earlier in the week it had rained so hard that half the road into Hanmer Springs has washed away. For two days no one could leave or enter the town. You can see some of it from the attached photo. Once again the scenery was incredible on the drive to Hanmer Springs. It was a gorgeous spring day! We
Hanmer Springs
Beautiful Spring Day! all commented on how green everything was. We arrived in New Zealand in May in the middle of Fall. Since our arrival all the hills, fields and forrests have been brown. How nice to see everything so green. And how confussing - we are still not used to the different seasons.
After checking into our cabin, we opted to walk to town, check out the hours for the hot pools and other local attractions, and make a dinner reservation (so that we didn't run into the same food meltdown situation that we had in Wanaka).
What a pretty community. The natural hot sulphur pools attract thousands, but the town itself should be a draw. Due to extensive planting of "exotic" European and American tree species in early 1900's, it looks like a Swiss alpine village and the area is surrounded by beautiful hiking, walking and mountain bike trails.
We made our plan - we would visit the hot springs before dinner, have dinner at Cafe Rustic (charming!), and enjoy what was left of daylight. Sydney and the boys went to A-Maze-N- Golf which was just that, a maze and mini golf. Gregg and I opted for some time away from
the kids and went for a hike. It is so nice that the kids are at the ages where we can leave Syd in charge for a few hours and get away. Gregg and I had a wonderful hike - It was quite steep up to see full views of Hanmer Springs, Lewis Pass to the west coast and the surrounding area.
At 6pm we met up to go to the hot pools. There are 11 of them and they vary in size and temperature. The kids were brave enough to want to go on the outdoor slides into the coldest pool. Gregg and I hung back in the more moderately heated pools. But, after nearly two hours I think we tried all but the slide and lap pools. It was a pretty chilly evening.
Sunday was another sunny spring day. Before getting in the car, we took a little hike through one of the many mountain bike/hiking forrest trails. We then headed out of town to hike up to some Maori drawings. It was lunchtime when we reached the spot. The boys were starving so we picked up some TakeAway for them for a picnic and headed into the
Road to Hanmer Springs
Half the road was washed out the week before in a rain storm. farmer's field in search of Maori drawings. Unfortuntely, it is lambing season - you see baby lambs everywhere - and hiking through the farmer's field during lambing season is not permitted, so we had our picnic and decided to come back to see the Maori drawings after October.
We drove home via the Inland Scenic Route, past Rakaia Gorge, Mt. Hutt, and Mt. Summers. We made a spontaneous stop at the gorge for a jet boat tour. The gorge looked as beautiful and exciting as the Shotover in Queenstown and the cost was less than half and the trip double in length! It was fantastic. We got a little wet, saw spectacular scenery and only once or twice felt concerned for our safety as we charged towards a cliff, only to have our boat captain spin the boat away a foot before hitting. He swore he'd never misjudged the distance! Murry's been run jet boats for 20 years. Pretty good track record.
We looked for a good restaurant in every little town on the way home. Methven, Mt Somers, and Geraldine were pretty much void of decent food on Sunday evening. There is something about Sunday nights and trying to
View from Hike
Gregg and I left the kids to play at A-Maze-N-Golf, and we went for a short, but steep hike up Conical Hill. find a restaurant open that offers more than fish and chips... After another exhausted search, we settled for one of our local favorites - "Benny's Again" around the corner from our house.
Next time we go to Hanmer, we taking our bikes and will allow for a longer stay.
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Jack Hotchkiss
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Shopping???
Greg, I can definitely sympathize with your feelings about shopping. I would rather go to the dentist!!!