New Zealand Vacation - Day 3
Fox Glacier - Lake Tekapo
Magnificent! That’s just one of many adjectives I could use to describe the New Zealand countryside. It’s just incredible in so many ways. Add it to your bucket lists folks. We spent most of the day in the car but it was just an amazing day.
Woke up to a steady rain in the small township of Fox glacier, an alpine town set in a valley. We took our time getting ready and getting out the door because we knew that the weather was supposed to get better and we wanted to take a walk up to the glacier. Well by 10:30 it was still raining but we couldn’t wait any longer so we started the walk. It drizzled the whole time but was still a good walk. Left town around noon and worked our way down the west coast, and sure enough, the weather cleared up within the hour.
Driving through the south island of New Zealand is like driving through several different continents. The closest thing I can think of is Hawaii but NZ is probably even better to drive through, each setting is just unbelievable and most of the roads are nearly deserted. The west coast is almost tropical at sea level. You get ferns and palm trees, empty beaches with huge waves. At altitude, the scenery looks more Canadian: evergreens, steep rock faces and snow, ice and rivers.
After hitting the town of (Du) Haast and grabbing lunch to go, we started heading inland, following a wide river valley. By this point, the clouds had almost completely dissipated and we had blue skies and amazing mountains surrounding us. We had to avoid stopping as much as possible, but it was impossible not to, there were tons of waterfalls and vistas. All it took was going about 100km inland for the scenery to become much more arid. Forested mountain faces gave way to Serengeti-like sheep filled plains. We stopped once for pictures in front of some sheep and all the ones near the fence looked up and chewed slowly, watching my every move as I crept slowly closer with the camera before some of them ran off.
Speaking of sheep, the motel owner from the previous night told us about a famous sheep nicknamed Shrek that was discovered in 2004 roaming the hills and had escaped capture for 6 years. Its wool had grown so long it looked like a ball of fur. It gained national notoriety and was sheared on national TV by New Zealand’s best shearers.
Turned north again at this town called Wanaka, which was the furthest point south on our trip and at 44 degrees and change, is further south than Toronto is north. The scenery soon changed again, as we were now behind the southern alps and the landscape became even more arid, almost desert like in spots. After another 150km or so, it settled back into plains as we came back up on the alps from the rear. Finally came up on one of the first of two huge lakes on the back of mount Cook and got to a visitor’s centre overlooking the deepest blue lake we’d ever seen and a crystal clear view of mount Cook reflecting off of it. Within another 50km, we got to lake Tekapo, our resting spot for the night, and enjoyed the sunset over the lake surrounded by about a dozen bunnies! With no snakes, or any real natural predators, rabbits tend to breed like…rabbits.
