New Zealand Part 3: Wanaka, Queenstown and Te Anau
After our lunchtime walk, it was onto the next town, Wānaka. Our route took us through Haast pass which was meant to have amazing views, but it was still a little cloudy so we couldn't see the tops of the mountains. It did clear up on the way out of the pass, so we got to see a bit of Lord of the Ring country.
We checked in to our hostel and then decided to go out for dinner as this was one of the bigger town we'd be staying in. We found a courtyard with a few different food trucks and got some burritos.
The next day was a big hike day. A lot of people climb Roy's Peak for sunrise, but we are not that sort of people, so we set off at 9:30. It was a tough uphill walk for 2.5 hours, but at the top, the views were great and as we ate lunch, the clouds slowly cleared and we got some good photos of the sprawling edge of the lake. The walk down took about the same as it was steep and we were tired.
We sat down in the sunny hostel garden for a while after we got back, and made the most of their hammocks. We went to go and get dinner at Big Fig, a restaurant Laura had recommended to us as having good veggie options, and then watched the sunset on Wānaka beach (which was a lake beach not a sea beach).
In the morning, we began our drive into Queenstown. It only took an hour from Wānaka, so we had a lot of time to find things to do. Our first stop was Arrowtown, an old gold mining town, which still had some structures standing or rebuilt from the Chinese settlement. We took a walk around, learning about the community, and then went into the actual town. It was still built like a 19th century mining town and reminded us a lot of the pioneer towns we'd seen in the Southwest US. It was a very nice village and if we hadn't brought a picnic, we probably would have had a really nice lunch here.
After Arrowtown we stopped at Lake Hayes for a little walk around. It was sheltered by trees and had uninterrupted views of the water all the way round. It was a three hour walk to go all the way round, but after the intense hike the day before we didn't feel like doing all that, so we just went for 45 minutes to get to the recreation area.
It was then on to Queenstown. As we approached the city the traffic suddenly got much busier than we'd seen on the rest of the Island, even compared to Christchurch. We drove past our hostel and couldn't find any parking, so we headed up into the residential streets beyond, but still nothing. We parked in a paid parking lot for the evening and had to walk 15 minutes back down the hill. Queenstown is known as the adventure capital, and lots of people use it as a base camp for day trips and activities.
We weren't doing any of this, just using it as a stopover to see the city, so we explored and then sat down to watch the sunset over Lake Wakatipu.
In the morning we set off early enough to catch the sunrise and arrived in Te Anau with no plans for the day. We went to the visitor centre and found out that we were in time for the bird sanctuary tour, so we joined that and met some blue ducks, takahe, and kākāriki.
The next morning began early, as we drove through the darkness to get to Milford Sound. We arrived in the parking lot just as it was light and checked in for our boat trip. The clouds were still pretty low and we couldn't really see anything which was disappointing, but as we waited to board and the sun rose a bit more, patches of sunlight started to shine through.
By the time we were on the boat, the sun had really started to shine and we could see the tops of the mountains (the middles were still cloudy though). We cruised around the fjord, seeing the landscape and waterfalls. We saw some seals (where we learnt that even though they are called fur seals, they are sea lions like we suspected) and a couple of dolphins in the distance. By the time the boat docked again a couple of hours later, the sun was really shining and we had great views of the fjord. We were very lucky as it had been raining all week and Milford Sound gets 200 rainy days a year.
After this stunning boat trip, we took a little walk and then went back to the car to explore some of the roadside stops. We stopped at Lake Marian which was a three hour round trip to get to the lake itself. We walked through rainforest and along a raging river and up and over lots of rocks and tree roots. It was a very fun climb, but very steep!
After an hour and a bit, the trail suddenly opened and we were looking at a lake in the middle of a valley. It was very blue in the sunlight and beautiful.
We ate our lunch here by the water and soaked up the sun for a while before heading back the way we came. On the way out of Fjordland, we also stopped at a viewpoint for Lake Gunn and Mirror lakes.
This one actually had a reflection!
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