Sunday February 9, 2025

We had a relatively early start this morning, out the door before 8:30.  We wanted to drive to the glacier since it was supposed to be clear in the morning.  We were rewarded with beautiful views of Franz Josef Glacier.

First, at the parking lot - this is the hut that used to stand at Cape Defiance, a 3 hour hike from town.  It was built in 1912 and moved down due to erosion as the glacier has retreated.

Tree ferns on the walk to the viewing place.

In 1908 the toe of the glacier came to where I'm standing (below).

We continued north east along the coast through more rainforest, with some sheep and dairy farms along the way.  We stopped at a rest area/lookout with a monument to 19 miners lost in a 1967 coal mining disaster.

We can tell when we get close to the ocean because we can see the mist from the spray off in the distance.

We stopped in Hokitika for coffee and Greymouth for petrol.  We got to the hotel fairly early and our room wasn't ready, so we drove into town to see what was what.

The view from the front steps of our hotel in Punakaiki.

The town is pretty tiny, but we parked and did the Pancake Rocks walk.  It was about 23 degrees and muggy.

They are called Pancake Rocks because they look like stacks of crepes.

The view from our room.

Saturday February 8, 2025

It looks like its going to be another hot one!  Today we had to leave Queenstown.  We filled up the gas tank, then, because the road out of the gas station was closed, we had to circle twice around a residential area before finding our way back to the highway.  It looks like they are going to upgrade to four lanes, but until then it is quite a bottleneck to get in and out of town.

Speaking of gas (petrol) we have seen prices from $2.68 to $3.00 per litre NZ, or about $2.17 to $2.43 CDN.  We can't complain about our prices when you see what most of the rest of the world pays.

The climb up out of Wanaka was very steep and curvy, right up into the alpine.  It was quite brown and dry up there.  Then we came down into Wanaka where there was a regatta on the lake.

We continued on, following Lake Hawea, then back to the northern end of Lake Wanaka.

As we got closer to the west coast and the coastal rain forest, it started clouding over.  And then it rained.

We stopped at the Blue Pools and made our lunch, but we didn't walk to the pools due to the number of people, the mosquitoes, and just wanting to get to our destination.  This was one of our longer driving days, 352 kilometers, but 5.5 hours due to the slower roads.  The photo below does not begin to show the dense jungle-like forest we saw, with walls of ferns.  You can tell it's a wet climate by the density of the tree canopy.

We made a brief stop at a rest area, warned by the people in the car next to us of the sandflies.  These are about the size of a mosquito but with a thicker body, and they bite!  About 20 followed us into the car and we spent the next 1/2 hour killing them.

Our destination was Franz Josef.  It's a cute little town, despite the rain and cloud.  We stayed in a motel, not a chain but family owned.  They were very informative about what to see and where to eat.  We went for dinner and had the best healthiest meal in a long time, at a fairly reasonable price.  Eating out is expensive, we usually pay $70 - $90 for dinner and a drink or two, but we kept it under $70 tonight.

It stopped raining after dinner and we got a beautiful rainbow.

Friday February 7, 2025

The weather is hot and sunny!  We drove 20 kilometers out of Queenstown to Arrowtown today.  Gold was discovered here in 1862 and it quickly grew from there.  Today it still has a lot of its old buildings, now filled with art galleries, eateries and wine bars.

There is an excellent example of a Chinese settlement.  The Chinese were invited to come from the Australian gold fields to work abandoned claims.  Of course they were segregated in their own community.

This is Ah Lum's store.  He sold European and Chinese goods, wrote letters for illiterate Chinese miners, stored gold for the miners, and provided a meeting place for them.

Home with storage sheds built into the rock wall.

One of the first European homes in the community, now a wine tasting bar.

The main street of Arrowtown.

One of the many alleys off the main street.

A row of miner's cottages, now homes and businesses.

It was a hot 25 degrees today, probably our hottest day yet.  It was nice to spend the afternoon in the room doing laundry and relaxing.  We went out in the evening to get dinner from the grocery store.  This was our first place with a microwave so we picked up lasagna from the deli.  Delicious!

The view from our patio.  Can you find the three parasailers?

Thursday February 6, 2025

Today was a nice easy drive of about 170 kilometers.  It rained in the night and was drizzly for half the drive today.  We left for Queenstown at around 10:00, but first I took a hair selfie.  I've given up, no one has travel sized mousse to tame this beast, and I am too cheap to buy full-sized and leave behind what I don't use.

We drove right through to Kingston at the south end of Lake Wakatipu.  We discovered that today is Waitangi Day, which is a national holiday here commemorating the signing of the treaty between the British and Maori chiefs in 1840.  There was a sign on the door of the cafe we stopped at saying a 20% surcharge would be added on to all purchases since they had to pay their staff extra to work today.  I asked if all places add that surcharge on holidays and was told that a lot do.  The minimum wage here is very high at $23.15, but stat holiday pay is just a cost of doing business in Canada.  I don't think raising prices for one day on every stat would go over very well at home.

I'm going to take a moment here to comment on the large amount of roadkill we have witnessed everywhere we've been.  Apparently the possums come out at night and try to cross the roads in the dark, quite unsuccessfully.  Possums were introduced to New Zealand for their fur.  They have multiplied exponentially and kill large numbers of birds, up to 26 million per year.  No one likes them so they don't try to avoid them on the road apparently.

The old railway station at Kingston.

Our room for two nights is like a small condo, very roomy and comfortable.  I wish we were here for a week, it would make a good base from which to explore the area.

The view from our patio.

We walked into town, about 3 blocks away.  Queenstown is built on a hill as you can see in the above photo.  It reminds me a bit of Whistler, lots of tourists, pedestrian-only streets, the first McDonalds and Starbucks we've seen since we've been here, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Hugo Boss, souvenir stores galore, along with every kind of food you can imagine, buskers and souvenir stalls on the lakeside walk.  Very overwhelming but cool at the same time.

A real mix of old and new.