New Zealand – Day Ten: June 7, 2010 – Queenstown to Fox Glacier

Happy Birthday to the Queen! Today is a national holiday in New Zealand. I also found it quite awesome that we were in Queenstown on the Queen’s birthday.  Surprisingly, a few places are still open around Queenstown, so Brandon and I decided to ditch the eggs for breakfast and go out to a restaurant for breakfast for the first time all trip.

 We ended up at Bob’s Weigh, which reminded me a lot of Nellie’s at home. I ended up with French toast on artesian bread, with fresh berries and shot glass of syrup, and Brandon had an omelet. Our waiter definitely checked out Brandon, and openly made “eyes” at him while we were ordering. I wasn’t quite sure how to react… I laughed it off, and teased Brandon for a few hours afterwards.

 We ended up wandering around Queenstown again, and it was super fun, despite the rain. It is very touristy – tons of giftshops and guided boat tours of the area, but there is something about the city that is almost comforting. It just is a happy place, and I would love to come back another winter and ski in the area. The Remarkables would probably put the Rockies to shame, and I’d probably end up taking up permanent residence just for the fresh powder.

 We left around noon and headed out towards Wanaka. The road to Wanaka was incredibly unnerving – switchback road with 10+ inches of snow piled up. It was a sight to see, and made me wonder if Calgary drivers could concour such a feat. (Probably not, they can’t drive 30 on a cleared road without causing traffic issues.)

 Wanaka was fairly small, and didn’t have much in it. The lake was gorgeous, and the skies were clearing up a bit, so you could see more of the Remarkables Mountain Range than you could in the last few days. We didn’t end up staying long, just wandered up the main street to a grocery store to get a loaf of bread, and then were back on the road.

 The drive to Fox Glacier was very long, but we did manage to see an incredible sunset along the way. Just past Haast, there is an extremely long one lane bridge (kind of intimidating, as it has passing bays just in case you didn’t see the people coming from the other side) and we pulled over just after it, cause the sky was already turning a vivid orange. We made our way down to the banks of the Haast river, and stood out there taking pictures for over 30 minutes. I think I took over 200 pictures of the sunset alone – it was incredible. Even more incredible than the one in Te Anau a few days previous, and I didn’t think anything could beat that.

 Just before we were about to leave, two mini tornadoes (or water spouts) came whipping down towards us from upstream. One narrowly missed me (I jumped out of the way, but ended up getting splashed with a mist from the wind) and the other one went right beside Brandon while he was on a small island just off shore from the river. I had never experienced anything like it. After a “What the hell was that?!” session, we decided to head back onto the road.

 We made it to Fox later in the evening, and decided to once again sleep on the side of the road, after going into the townsite to use the bathroom. We pulled over at a public toilet outside, and I was faced with a fear I had not yet really experienced in New Zealand: Spiders. And LOTS of them, all over the walls and ceilings of this bathroom. I refused, and after being made fun of slightly by Brandon, I went into a bar just across the road and explained my fear to them, and used their (spider free) washroom instead. It was terrifying.

 Tomorrow: I hike a glacier. My inner geologist is screaming in excitement right now.

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New Zealand – Day Eight: June 5, 2010 – Milford Sound to Queenstown

 That was by far probably the best sleep in the entire world. I didn’t wake up once, and it so incredibly dark and all you could hear was the sound of a trickling stream not too far from where we had pulled over. It was extremely serene, and it made the impending return to North America in less than 8 days seem absolutely horrible. 

We woke up around 8:30, and drove back down to Milford, only a few minutes drive from where we had parked. We parked in the little car park and jogged our way down to the boat dock, payed for our admission onto this Nature Cruise and waited around for a few minutes before we actually got to board. The boat was a decent size, and there were only about 16 of us on board, and it could hold around 90. Traveling in the off season was probably the best idea ever. Brandon and I grabbed some of the free coffee on board and went and stood on the deck of the small liner as we pulled out. I sang “I’m on a Boat” by the Lonely Island in my head… because well, it was fitting. I wanted desperately to stand on the bow and sing it loudly, but thought better of it due to the proximity of the people on board.The cruise itself was absolutely amazing.

We stopped at 11 different points along the way, each of them seeming to get better than the one previous. The pictures can say better than words on just how absolutely stunning the two hour cruise was. Of the eleven points that we stopped at, the ones of interest included this incredible rock face just filled with exposed ore minerals. I have never seen so much copper at the surface of a rock in all of my life. Fortunately, the area is protected by conservation laws, so no mining can happen to destroy the natural and untouched beauty of this area. (Though, if it ever came a time when New Zealand literally went broke, a mineral mining industry could surely be set up, and they would have billions of dollars in revenue from this location alone. And that is an observation just of what could be seen at the surface. I can’t even imagine what else those mountains stored.)

 Other points of interest on the cruise included tree avalanche scarps all along the cliff faces. All of the root systems are connected on these mountains so that they anchor themselves stronger, as the dip of these cliffs approaches greater than 70degrees in a lot of places. So, when one tree falls down, all the trees in the area are dragged down with it because of the interconnected roots, and it leaves giant “strips” of exposed rock down the cliff face. At first I thought that they were all waterfall scars, but the guide on board was extremely knowledgeable about the entire area, which was fantastic. As we exited the sound and moved towards the Tasman, the most incredible rainbow appeared from the little bit of light that managed to break through the cloud and reflect off the water and mist that was settled in the air. I can honestly say that it was the prettiest rainbow I have ever seen, and the pictures prove it.

 We then passed by a rock that was covered in Fur Seals – the first seals that I had seen up close in the wild. They seemed to know that a boat was coming, because the few that were in the water put on a mini show – doing flips in the water and generally showing off.

 The rest of the cruise was just as beautiful – I put my camera away and really was able to sink in to the beauty of the area.

 We left Milford shortly after our Cruise finished, and headed back towards Te Anau (hopefully stopping for another latte!) – stopping at a place called The Chasm along the way. It was a huge gorge, with incredible erosion patterns. Unfortunately the foot bridge didn’t give a great view, and I saw a weta in a tree while Brandon was exploring down near the waterfall area, and I chickened out and decided not to follow him.

 We made it back to Te Anau just before sunset, though much to our disappointment the Sandfly Café was closed. So we headed down to the lake, picked up some seafood chowder from a local street vendor, and watched the most incredible sunset to date. The colors were so intense, even the best camera in the world could not have captured how amazing it really was.

After the sunset ended, we departed towards Queenstown, and arrived there shortly after 7pm – just in time for dinner at the best burger place in the world: Fergburger. We ended up running into a few of Brandon’s friends from Wellington while we were there, which was kind of cool. Honestly, best burger ever, but I was full after ¼ of it.

We wandered around Queenstown for a bit (attempting to digest the most amount of meat I had eaten in months), but turned in early, and ended up camping on the side of the road again. Not paying for somewhere to sleep is probably the best thing ever.

View full set of pictures on Flickr