Advertisement
Published: February 18th 2011
The above panorama is from Jackson Bay looking back towards Haast
7th February - 13th February 2011 Its been hard getting motivated to write these blogs at the moment. Its not like we aren't doing anything – we are busy every day. Its just that travelling round our own country is so different than travelling somewhere else, somewhere different, that we don't really feel like we are on holiday. We certainly don't feel like tourists (though we don't like to think of ourselves as tourists wherever we go) as here we speak the same language, drive the same, use the same money (no need to worry about foreign currency transaction charges), the shops are the same, the food is the same. We are far from bored, we are loving the time away with Samara, loving exploring our own country, I guess its just not very challenging! That can be a good thing when travelling with a baby, but so far this really has been far too easy. Of course, we are probably jinxing ourselves now, but it has. As long as we fed Samara regularly and give her opportunities for good sleeps during the day (she has always been
a poor daytime sleeper though – too inquisitive, and this trip is providing far too many new experiences!) she has been really good. After all, she's with her mum and dad 24/7, what more could a 4 ½ month old want?! We don't want you to get the wrong idea, we would much rather be here doing what we are doing than be at home, its just that its hard to write about the ordinary, even the really impressively spectacularly ordinary! Good times – you bet! Seeing heaps – for sure! Impressed with what NZ has to offer – too right! Feeling like wimpy travellers? Yup! After more adventure? Well, that one we are not sure about! First time cautious parents not wanting to harm their daughter in any way, we're not about to go jet-boating with her or bungy jumping (we're in Queenstown at the moment and that is whats on offer!), but something to get the blood flowing now and then wouldn't go amiss! But don't worry Grandparents and Aunties, we'll get our kicks in some quiet, safe, peaceful way – or wait till Samara is a little older!
So, sorry if we sound bored in any
of these blogs, we aren't, we are just struggling to write about our own land, stunning that it is. And being camped on the shore of Lake Wakatipu 11km outside Queenstown – stunning scenery, but those sand-flies are back again! - should give us plenty to “write home about”, so here goes, a summary of our experiences since the last blog.
Haast and the Haast Pass We rode out the rain in Haast Beach camp ground. There wasn't a lot of rain in the evening, most of which we spent in the kitchen / lounge area giving Samara heaps of space to spread out in. The rain didn't start up again in earnest until sometime during the night, and by the morning power and water was out in the camp ground. No this isn't adventure, storms do this to us at home! Strangely there was hot water for a shower, but no cold water for anything else. So we were clean but couldn't fill the water tank in the van.
We had read that the drive to Jackson Bay from Haast was rated by Lonely Planet as one of the best in NZ or the world. Whoever
wrote that has not driven far! It was nice but not spectacular. Jackson Bay does have the oldest European grave on the West Coast and an almost buggy friendly walk from the sheltered bay to an exposed ocean beach, both of which we checked out before heading back. We had time for a bird-free bird-lovers walk at Hapuka estuary before leaving the West Coast (wrong time of day?).
Just outside Haast the pass road info sign said “Road Closed” but as there was traffic in both directions we kept going (not very adventurous here either!!). The scenery really was stunning, we felt tiny with the sides of the gorge towering over us. All the recent rain meant that there were many tumbling torrents of all sizes coming down the hills. The road had been closed and kind of still was, the digger moving out of the way periodically to let the backed up traffic pass. That was the biggest slip we met, both down onto the road and part of the road into the river. There were other smaller slips where debris had been cleared a lot quicker. We stopped at 3 major waterfalls (Roaring Billy, Thunder Creek and
Fantail), the “Gates of Haast” and the not very “Blue Pools”. And of course at the big slip while waiting for the digger to give traffic a turn at scrambling over what was left of the highway. The falls were definitely roaring and thundering, someone mentioned at Thunder Creek Falls that you could usually climb across the boulders in the creek bed to get closer to the falls – the boulders were under water and contributing to the turbulence. The Blue Pools looked great in the pictures, but due to the rain had turned a mucky, silty grey. The area still was neat though, the landscape not majorly affected by the rain. The Gates of Haast were hard to see and even harder to photograph, but picture a narrow gorge with water churning through, big and small boulders in the way (or massive and not-so-massive-but-still-huge). The Haast Pass was signposted, it was 564m and the border of Otago and Westland.
We camped at Boundary Creek DOC site, with awesome views over Lake Wanaka and mountains – some with a dusting of snow on top. While there were still sand-flies out and about, they were less than we've had for
ages – yippee!
Wanaka The following morning we descended further into the Southern Lakes, driving past Lake Hawea and into Wanaka. We had lunch on the shores of Lake Wanaka, cold but beautiful – the lake a gorgeous blue with a back drop of mountains, and even some snow. We had a bit of a wander round then went out to Puzzling World for a couple of hours of confusion. Puzzling World has rooms of holograms (Samara seemed to like the lion one but gave little reaction to the others), two odd perspective rooms (one we videoed so cant share, but the other we tried taking some pics!) and a big maze outside. We did the quicker challenge in the maze – get to all four corners – rather than the harder one of getting to them in a set order. It was a bit of fun for the afternoon! We found a good and reasonably cheap campsite in Albert Town, which is just next to Wanaka. Basic but right on the Clutha River, and the spot we set up on had views to the mountains too. Not to mention lots of friendly (read begging!) ducks, which kept
camping at Lake Wanaka
Boundary Creek DOC campSamara amused for a while.
We had a good skype with my parents the next morning, though Samara was a bit tired to say much (no one believes she's a giggling, chattering little thing the rest of the time and only shuts up when we get the camera out or skype!). We went out towards Mt Aspiring for lunch and a walk round Diamond Lake, before doing some of the lakeside trail round Wanaka. See, not really exciting and major blog inspiring, but it keeps us busy exploring each place we visit. We had fun in the park, playing on the see-saw and swings, I guess we are going through a non-adventurous stage in our trip!
We camped again at Albert Town (we recommend this camp to anyone not wanting showers) then spent the morning at the Fighter Pilot museum at the Wanaka airport, for something that looked small, you can spend a lot of time there, there was a lot of reading but it was all interesting, though not as many planes as we thought there'd be. From there we took the Cardrona road towards Queenstown. I think we drove the road the best way as we
seemed to climb up slowly, with just a short piece of steep road, whereas coming down we seemed to twist and turn round all the switchbacks for ages longer. We stopped at the Cardrona Hotel for a cold drink as apparently you must! The hotel was 'original' looking on the outside, but a bit more modern on the inside and round the back. We also met an unidentified film crew taking off in their helicopter at the Queenstown end viewpoint. Movie? TV ad?
Arrowtown, Bannockburn We didn't get as far as Queenstown, stopping in Arrowtown instead. The people in the info place there are the worst we have met for ages, really unhelpful, monosyllabic responses, when we asked about camping in the area they said there was one in Arrowtown, elsewhere we'd have to go look them up ourselves. Hopefully we caught them on a bad day! We explored the Chinese Camp but that was all as it was getting late. Colin will just have to pan for gold another day.
Our research found a cheap campsite in Bannockburn, and it turned out nicer than we expected (Bannockburn Domain Camp for those also looking, $10 each non-power
($14 with), nice, new shower and kitchen block). But more importantly, there were NO sand-flies!!!!!!! So we sat outside, gave Samara a bath in the open air and generally enjoyed not being in the van all evening.
We explored the Bannockburn Sluicings site the next morning. This is a 1-1.5 hour wander through an old gold site with the vague remains of buildings, dams, an orchard, waterways etc. The landscape was sculptured by the miners sluicing for gold from 1865 to 1910. The scenery reminded us of places in the US, dry arid canyons, dust everywhere, but on a smaller, NZ scale. You could still clearly see the rock lined water races and the test shafts in the walls of the 'canyons' where miners dug to see if there was gold worth going after. It was funny looking at the site, all brown and dusty, as all around, and in the distance leading to Lake Dunstan, was the rich green of vineyards and orchards, quite a contrast. We treated ourselves to a cheese platter lunch at the Gibbston Valley Cheesery, their cow and goat blues and aged cheddar are particularly good. Not that anything we tried was bad, but
we did enjoy those.
Queenstown From there we went into Queenstown and met a nice guy who gave us his parking ticket. Amongst other things, we took Samara down into the underwater viewing deck in Lake Wakatipu. For a while she was fascinated by the trout and the diving Scaup ducks but then the the slightly drunken antics of people taking part in some kind of challenge became more interesting and she missed the eel.
And this brings us to sitting on the shores of Lake Wakatipu at Twelve Mile Delta DOC camp. Colin is off panning for more gold dust and Samara and I are sitting here enjoying the view.
We went back into Queenstown in the morning and went to the Farmers and Craft Markets. We expected so much more from the farmers market, thinking the given the orchards and wineries etc in the wider area, there would be some decent stalls, and maybe we could stock up on fruit and veggies. It was a good job we had stopped at an orchard stall near Cromwell (Webbs Orchard) for our $2.50/kg peaches, nectarines and apricots as the market was very small, not more than
½ dozen stalls. The craft market was better though. Samara and I walked (I walked, she rode!) most of the lakeside track to Frankton from Queenstown while Colin filled up with petrol and LPG. Great views! I'm sure the whole place looks far more spectacular with snow on the mountains, and maybe one day we'll come back in winter, but it did look good today.
We went back to Arrowtown for lunch and a chance for Colin to do his gold-panning again. While he unsuccessfully browsed through the river, Samara and I walked the centennial or millennium or whatever track along side the Arrow River. It wasn't the most exciting, just a metal track through the trees by the river, but it was cool and pleasant enough, I got an hours exercise and Samara got an hours sleep. Then we spoiled it by getting big ice-creams!
We had another night camping on the shores of Wakatipu heading south, but as like last night at the DOC site, there were sand-flies here. Shame. But then it was a bit windy to sit out and stay warm for long. So we enjoyed the views and listened to the waves crashing
from the comfort of the van. We couldn't afford better views, only metres from the lakes edge.
The wind had lessened and changed direction over night, when we woke up (late as its Sunday!) the waves had stopped crashing on our shore and were headed elsewhere. We slowly trundled along to Te Anau for a walk along the lake shore to the wildlife centre and to book our Doubtful Sound trip.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.135s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0711s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Donna and Neil
Donna and Neil
Ahhh, sandflies!
We remember dodging the sandflies on the South Island...we ended up draping our mosquito net over the back of our camper van so we could at least get some fresh air! Interesting into about those pesky buggers! That's complete rubbish about colours though, but one thing is for certain - don't go into salt water with sandfly bites as it re-activates the anti-coagulants and the itching frenzy starts all over again! Reading your blog brought back some nice memories of our time in NZ...especially those orchard stalls - you guys are so lucky to have such cheap and good quality fruit! It is strange to be a tourist in your own country but fun too, hope the rest of your trip is good!