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Snow over Lewis Pass
View from Hanmer Springs of the snow that had closed the mountain road.This weekend has been one 5-day epic road trip around a large part of the South Island. A sort of farewell trip for Me, Max and Kd.
With my rather spontaneous decision to leave New Zealand there was a large part of the South that I still hadn't seen, and Max and Kd needed a holiday. We decided that if we did a lot of driving then we could make it down the west coast, to Wanaka and back, and still see a lot in 5 days.
We set out from Kaikoura on Thursday morning, heading west towards the Lewis Pass, stopping for lunch at Hanmer Springs as heavy snowfall had closed the mountain road for a few hours that morning. We spent most of two days driving down the west coast to Franz Josef, where Kd and I had booked ourselves onto a guided glacier tour. We then drove overnight to Wanaka and spent a day there before the long journey North. They left me in Christchurch this afternoon on the way home.
I've tried to express in these photos the diversity of terrain we passed through, from the snows of Lewis Pass, the thickly tangled vegetation of
the west coast to the truly epic mountain views surrounding Wanaka, Queenstown and the Mckenzie Basin. The weather on the west coast was characteristically wet, which gave the rainforest an even denser, closed-in atmosphere, but the sky cleared up perfectly for the glacier walk.
The Franz Josef Glacier was something I had wanted to visit for a long time (not having any active glaciers at home), so Kd and I spent a bit of money for a full day guided tour which took us some 400m up the glacier's steep face.
Walking on the glacier was nothing like what I imagined, moving very slowly through alternating peaks and crevasses. What was really strange about Franz Josef is that it falls quite steeply into the valley, and the valley sides are thick with dark vegetation clinging to the rock faces and making a stark contrast with the ice.
In Wanaka, a busy ski town (but not as commercial as nearby Queenstown) Max surprised me and offered to buy me a Bungy jump for my upcoming birthday. Not something I had considered before because of my budget, and perhaps more exciting because I hadn't thought about it at all. We
The West Coast
Gloomy weather and crashing waves at punakaiki. went to Kawarau Bridge - the site of the world's first ever Bungy jump, a deep ravine with a clear blue mountain river below.
Kd, having a serious fear of falling, decided spontaneously to jump too. I jumped first, (see the above video), and Kd followed, after a few terrified returns from the ledge and some help from the staff.
As calm as I was about the whole thing, I was still hit by a wave of terror hit my stomach mid-fall as my body realised just how far I was falling. We had the shakes for the rest of the day, fantastic.
Yesterday was a long drive starting early from Wanaka to Christchurch. We stopped at Lake Tekapo for some ice skating and a dip in the hot pools with great mountain views. I saw my last New Zealand snow on the Lindis Pass before the long slog through the of the Canterbury plains - miles upon miles of flat dairy pastures, broken by tall windbreak hedges and massive irrigation devices several kilometres long.
Max and Kd dropped me off in Christchurch yesterday evening, and now I've got to change all of my winter clothes for summer
Lake Ianthe
Rainforest vegetation on the West Coast. ones for my flight to Darwin.
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Petra
non-member comment
worth watching you!
It was just soooo nice to see u all again and read about south island in winter time! Thanks for another awesome post and I'll follow you to Oz shortly...