Mozzeenet

Really enjoyed a recent trip to NZ. What a spectacular country. In this instalment I’ll cover Christchurch to Queenstown which was my favourite part scenery wise. The snow-topped mountains juxtaposed with the coast, rainforest, rocky rivers and harsh, wild landscape was just amazing. We travelled over Arthurs Pass to the West Coast then travelled down the coast via the glaciers, Haast Pass, Lake Wanaka and then to Queenstown.

Arriving in Christchurch, we caught up with my aunt, uncle and cousins as well as my great-aunt and second cousins - a lot of fun. It was cold and grey as well as a public holiday so the city area of Christchurch wasn’t shown at its best. We just picked up our rental car and a couple of accessories - a new tripod for Andrew (the other one decided it didn’t want to leave Australia!) and beanie and gloves - ready to head off on our adventure.

The Arthur’s Pass national park landscape is desolate and rocky with a winding road taking us from the East to the West coast - it was snowing as we drove through which made for an interesting landscape and quite a novelty.

Apparently it is quite common for it to be sunny and warm on the West coast when it is wet and cold in Christchurch and that was our experience. After reaching the coast, we stopped off at Hokatika for a ‘whitebait sammie’ - it’s a bit like a fish omelette in a sandwich. Doesn’t sound great but was quite yummy. Maybe it was just the excitement of trying a local delicacy. My cousins recommeded me to try some whitebait over there.

As we drove down the coast towards the glaciers, we were so impressed by the snow-capped mountains looming in the distance while surrounded by rainforest and with glimpses of the coast.

Our first night was spent in the village near Franz Joseph glacier. The glaciers are very interesting - vast rivers of ice on the mountainside with a field of boulders spreading out from the base. It was colder when we got near to them. We didn’t go up too close but there were helicopters and planes whizzing around overhead taking people over and onto the glaciers. The next day we went to see Fox Glacier and got an especially nice view of that from the roadside a bit outside the town. Also had a quick walk around Lake Matheson which is nearby. There are so many fantastic lakes in NZ and we saw quite a few.

I also love the rushing aqua blue rivers with grey stones which are prevalent in NZ. We crossed many one-lane bridges where you have to give way to cars coming in the other direction. Some longer ones have passing bays.

From Fox glacier we travelled via Wanaka to Queenstown which took us via three amazing landscapes - firstly Haast Pass with huge boulders next to rushing rivers and in between mountains and rivers, another was Lake Hawea where we stopped and marvelled at the reflection of the surrounding mountains in the water and the other was the view from the Crown Ranges road, the highest national road in NZ, providing us with sweeping views of the rivers, lakes, mountains and plains around Queenstown - truly amazing.

We had a lot of fun in Queenstown, the adventure capital of NZ. Andrew decided to do the Canyon Swing! This is similar to a bungy except after free-falling for 60m, strapped to a long wire and harnessed up, you are swung out over a gorge for 200m. I was terrified watching but Andrew was pretty brave - only hesitating for a few minutes before taking the plunge. He looked like a stick figure on the end of a string when he had swung to the other side of the canyon.

We also took a gondola up to the top of one of the mountains, again providing great views of Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding ranges. My adventure activity there involved a luge ride on a little go-cart thing down a specially made track. It was very tame!

Another more nerve-wracking activity involved driving up a gravel road without side barriers into The Remarkables mountains. We were both experiencing vertigo so decided to go back except there was nowhere to turn round so we had to keep going until we came to a turning circle further up the mountain. We probably only got a few kms up but it felt like we were soooooo high. It is the road used to reach the ski-fields in Winter. The views again were magnificent so it was worth it.

See the rest of the photos from this leg of the journey here.