Hanmer Springs - Bees, tents and hot water!

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The drive up to Hanmer started off quite flat with some lovely rolling hills around - and Mark even managed to get a photo of a bird of prey!! Then it got very windy once off the main highway. When we arrived we headed straight for the campsite we had booked. As we parked up and went to the back door of the van we noticed that it was covered in oil - Mark immediately checked underneath to find that there was oil dripping off the mud flaps. So I headed straight to the desk to find out where the nearest garage was. Luckily we had a tent so we unloaded all our necessary gear into Dad and Sandra’s cabin and off we went to drop the van at the garage. They had a quick look at it that evening and phoned to say it was a major oil leak (like I didn’t already know that bit!!) but they couldn’t strip it until Monday, therefore no parts until Tuesday!!! So instead of staying for a quiet 2 nights we were stuck in a small place for four nights, and in truth, once you had been to the hot springs and walked through the forest there wasn’t a lot else to do!! Staying in the tent wouldn’t have been quite so bad if it hadn’t been horrendous wind the first night where I spent most of the night awake thinking the tent was going to blow down! The fact that the owners kept bees in the spare field so we were inundated with bees, wasps and any number of bugs!! Then there was the torrential rain along with the 44 degree heat one day so it was really hot and humid in the tent!! We were definitely glad to have the van back!

So we did visit the hot springs and spent a few hours there - I went twice, once with Dad and Sandra and once with Mark. It is a large complex that costs to get in but you could easily spend the day there. There are sulphur pools (these are the untouched ones that come straight from the ground at about 42 degrees), mineral pools, hydrothermal pools, rock pools and rainbow pools, alongside this there is a swimming pool (cold) and a lazy river!! We spent a lovely afternoon wandering through the forest and down into town and back. We were going to do the waterfall walk the following day but the weather had different ideas - so it was a day spend indoors doing crosswords!!

Luckily the van was fixed on Monday night so we were able to head onwards across Lewis pass and to Westport


sorry the photos of the van are on this one - I forgot to add them into the Christchurch blog when we first got it.

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