14 December 2006

NZ-West Coast Adventures

After our arrival to the South Island and spending a few days out on the water kayaking, we decided to make our way to Queenstown by driving. We decided to go west and drive along the coast as we heard it's beautiful and figured we had a few days to enjoy the scenery. We also were told about some neat sights like the pancake rocks (Punaikiki), the glaciers, and the beautiful glacier lakes near Waanaka and Queenstown.
The West Coast definitely lived up to our expectations. While the weather was quite variable, it was much like the San Francisco coastal area in summer - fog/clouds and occasional sun! We just had such a blast seeing the sites that we didn't really mind.
Our first major stop was at Punaikiki to see the pancake rocks. This is a cliff area that has been carved into grottos and coves by the ocean, and the layers of rock here eroded differently so it looks like someone carved horizontal lines into the grey cliffsides. I was personally amazed to see palm trees this far south - apparently they're native to this area! And I thought palm trees only liked warm weather...

We finished our first day staying in Franz Josef. This little town is right by the glacier, so we drove over to the park and hiked to a view point. We lucked out with a little sun, and got to see the front of the glacier poking through a river valley. It was quite a sight to see a mass of blue, black and white ice in the middle of a lush green valley! We learned that Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers in NZ are unique in that they exist in the middle of the temperate rainforest, whereas other glaciers exist in more barren mountainous terrain. Later, in South America, we got to see massive glaciers in their typical location.

On day 2 of our trip down the west coast, we drove down a few minutes to Fox Glacier, where we had reserved room on a helicopter ride to go onto the glacier and do some hiking. We really lucked out with weather; it started getting a little sunny and clear, so the company decided to start helihike services that afternoon, starting with our scheduled trip! Praise God - we learned they had not flown up in several days, so we were the first group in the last 2 or 3 days.

Julie and I agreed the heli-hike was one of our NZ highlights. We put on some heavy leather boots and strapped on little crampons that didn't look like they'd work. But they kept us steady as we walked around for 3 hours on top of Fox Glacier. Our trip up was fun - the pilot circled around the lower part of the glacier, arriving at our landing spot where we waited for the other sets of trekkers to be brought up. Our guide was a college student from Detroit, MI! who was working in NZ and was on his last helihike before heading back home. So he was quite enthusiastic in chopping away at the glacier, clearing a pathway here and there as we tramped around. He even found us a few ice caves to crawl through, which made for some spectacular photo shots. It was really amazing to see the deep blue color that the ice creates when it's compressed as hard as it is in a glacier. Finally, he took us close to a waterfall that was pouring down along one of the sides of Fox Glacier, and we quickly trekked back to the heli landing so we could get back down - apparently the clouds were coming back so they only ran 2 trips the entire day! Well, we were about 1/2 hour late, but we didn't mind - we got a fun trip poking around on the top of a glacier.

The rest of the afternoon, we drove to Haast and stayed the night, at what was probably the cleanest hostel we've seen on our travels. Along the way, we stopped at one or two beautiful beach spots, to take in some of the amazing forest scenery along the coast. It was quite entertaining to talk to our Haast hostel owner - he was very proud of his clean hostel and we made sure to tell him we were enjoying it!

Our third, and last day, we drove from Haast through Waanaka to arrive at Queenstown. Along the way, we stopped at a bunch of short hikes through the Haast Pass to see some blue-green pools, waterfalls and of course the beautiful glacier lakes near Waanaka and Queenstown. Well, a coworker told me this was a beautiful drive, and I'm really glad we spent the whole day driving through it - it is just a majestic area; makes you feel like you're in the movie trilogy LOTR!

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