Arthur's Pass & Farewell, New Zealand!

On our last night in New Zealand, we had intended to camp somewhere in the Arthur's Pass area. However, it was extremely cold once we got into the mountains, as there had been snow down to 1400 meters overnight (Arthur's Pass is a small town at about 800 meters elevation), so we ended up getting a dorm room at Mountain House YHA. In the morning, we tackled two hikes, one longer steep climb to Temple Basin and another shorter trek to the Devil's Punchbowl waterfall. It was a gorgeous day to be outdoors and we soaked up as much sun and fresh air as we could before getting in the car to head to Christchurch.

Temple Basin

Devil's Punchbowl Waterfall

The road through the middle of the South Island from Greymouth to Christchurch provided us with amazing scenery. Along the way we stopped for lunch at a stunning location just a few minutes off of the main road. The views made me sad that we had to leave such a beautiful place!

 

Our rental car treated us to this lovely lunchtime view!

Goodbye, Southern Alps!

Within a few hours we were back in Christchurch, ready to hop on our plane for the short flight back to Melbourne. I put together a map of how we traveled around each island, trying to put circles at most of the places where we stayed overnight.

New Zealand is a country that caters well to travelers, with "iSITES", or visitor information centers, found in even the smallest of towns. I also loved that each and every town we drove through had relatively clean public toilets, usually right on or just off of the main road. Erik and I thought that New Zealand seemed a bit more "Americanized" when compared with Australia in terms of food, as we were able to find streaky bacon (the closest thing we have found to American bacon here!) in nearly every grocery store and we even encountered canned black beans, which we have NEVER seen in Oz! Interestingly, the Kiwis and Aussies even have different words for certain objects. For example, flip flops in Australia are referred to as thongs, but in NZ they are called jandals. We ended up buying a "chilly bin" to keep our food cold while on the road, not an "esky", as they are commonly called in Australia, also known as a cooler to us American folk.

At first I was disappointed that it was taking me so long to write up these posts about our travels in NZ, since that is essentially all I have been writing about since we returned in late January. However, each time I sat down to write a post, I got to re-live our experiences, reading the notes I had jotted down along the way and looking at the pictures, which instantly brought back wonderful memories of our trip. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to spend several weeks in such a beautiful country and I hope you have enjoyed reading about our travels. So though I am sad to see the posts about New Zealand coming to an end, I am excited to share some of our more recent Aussie adventures with you too!

The West Coast

Happy Cinco de Mayo, friends! Erik and I held our 2nd Annual Australian-based Cinco de Mayo party last night and it was a huge success. Beergaritas were a hit once again and, like last year, we had many different countries represented including Italy, Spain, Netherlands, UK, Canada, India, and a few Australians, of course! :)

The views on our drive from Wanaka to the coast were stunning!

iPhone shot from the passenger seat!

Haast Pass

 

Thunder Falls

Once we got close to Fox Glacier, our next destination, we looked for a spot to spend the night. We ended up heading down a long, unpaved road to Gillespie's Beach, a free DOC campsite. From there, we had amazing views of Mt Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand.

It was hard to choose what to watch...the mountains or the sunset over the ocean!

The next day, we visited both Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, where we did short hikes at each place. Unfortunately, you have to do a guided tour to be able to walk onto the glaciers, so we were not able to get super close to the ice.

Our view of Fox Glacier from the picnic table where we cooked breakfast.

You never know what you will see in the middle of the road in NZ!

Hiking around Franz Josef Glacier

Franz Josef

Sister-in-laws!

Glacial water = awesome

That night we drove to Hokitika, a funky town on the beach, where we dined on delicious pizza from Fat Pipi...good stuff! We camped that night at Lake Mahinapua, and we got rained on. A LOT.

 

See that puddle in the tent?!

Turns out that rain was the theme of the day, as we got rained on twice while out exploring Punakaiki Rocks. Erik and I originally had plans to visit the famous pancake rocks on our way down from Abel Tasman, but because of the bridge washout, we changed those plans and took a small detour up to Punakaiki on our way to Greymouth.

Do they look like stacks of pancakes to you?

Once we arrived in Greymouth, our last stop on the coast before heading east towards Christchurch, we decided we needed to visit Monteith's, a recently built brewery offering a great deal on beer and cider tastings.

Monteith's also gave us vouchers for free beer that could be used at a local pub in Greymouth, so we stopped by a random pub to redeem our vouchers. We had quite an interesting experience sitting at the bar with the locals in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday!

From Greymouth, we headed towards Arthur's Pass, our last overnight stop on this amazing New Zealand adventure!

Milford Sound

Fiordland National Park, where Milford Sound is located, is one of the top tourist destinations in New Zealand, attracting around 1 million visitors per year. We could not leave the South Island without seeing Milford Sound, but we did have to decide "how" we would explore the area. Essentially, we could get on one of the various boat tours that cruises around Milford Sound OR we could kayak around the sound. The latter option obviously would involve more work, but we thought that it would be a more interesting and unique way to see Milford Sound. Unfortunately, unlike our Abel Tasman kayaking experience, we could not find a way to rent kayaks unguided around Milford Sound. Therefore, we booked a tour with a group, Fiordland Wilderness Experiences. I actually wanted to book with a different company, Roscos, but they were fully booked by the time we got around to organizing our trip.

This is the tunnel to get to Milford Sound, Homer Tunnel. One way. No lights. Unpaved. Looks like it was just dug yesterday. It was quite an experience to drive through!

It rained the entire way to Milford Sound and it was still raining when we arrived at the lodge where we were meeting our group. However, our guide, Luke, assured us that rainy conditions were common and were, in fact, some of the best conditions due to the effect of rain on waterfall viewing. We loaded up into some cold weather gear and set out in our kayaks in a group of 9, including Luke. The first hour or so was the best, in my opinion. We got to kayak to the base of Lady Bowen Falls, where we could actually feel the falls pushing us back in our kayak. The next few hours were spent kayaking around the sound, enjoying awesome views of Mitre Peak, waterfalls, and an occasional seal.

Carlie and her kayaking partner, Emma

Our group heading towards Lady Bowen Falls

The sensation of being pushed back by the waterfall was crazy!

Many, many peaks...

...and lots of waterfalls!

 

After we had been out for a few hours, the wind started to pick up and the conditions on the water were getting a bit rough. At that point, Luke decided that we would form a sail and try to sail back to our starting point. We have some hilarious video of this on the GoPro, but I have yet to go through the videos from our NZ trip, so I might have to share it at a later date! We formed a line of 4 kayaks, and the people on each end held one side of the sail, allowing us to glide without having to paddle. It was fun but it was freezing, because we were getting splashed by cold water and now that we were no longer paddling, we were not actually doing any work to generate body heat. Fortunately by the end of our trip, the sun was coming out, which helped to warm us up! We said goodbye to our group and hit the road back towards Queenstown, stopping along the way to check out a few more sights.

Erik at the Chasm, a spot where water has carved funky holes in granite rocks.

Family!

More waterfalls, this time right next to the road.

Carlie loves everything about Milford Sound!

Pretty sweet views on the drive out!

About 15 minutes into our drive, we ran into stopped traffic. A tree had come down in the middle of the road and it ended up taking about 2 hours for them to get machinery in to move it! Fortunately, with the sun out, we were able to set up all of our camping gear in order to let it dry. That night we stayed in Queenstown at Bumbles Backpackers, a great place with fantastic lake views.

View of the lake from the lounge at Bumbles

We were hoping that bungy jumping would be up and running for Carlie, but the water levels were still really high so that was not happening. Since that was the case, we decided to head to Wanaka for a second time, basically to spend some time with our friend, Mark.

Looking back towards Queenstown on the drive to Wanaka.

Queenstown. See the plane landing? This must be the coolest airport to fly into...surrounded by mountains!

Mark hooked us up with an amazing deal at the resort that he manages, where we got to enjoy working out at a fully equipped gym, swimming in the pool, and relaxing in the hot tubs. If you ever get to visit Wanaka, I highly recommend a stay at Oakridge Resort!

Living area and part of the kitchen in our 2 bedroom apartment

Lap pool

The best-ever hotel gym. Squat racks and pull up bars are behind me.

Who wouldn't want to spend time in those pools/hot tubs? There are 7 tubs to choose from, by the way!

That evening we went to see Skyfall (the new Bond film) at a small movie theater called Rubys. At Rubys, you order drinks before the movie, tell the bartenders when in the movie you would like your drinks delivered, and then they bring them to you! Also, you sit in large leather recliners in a small theater that seats about 25 people. It was a really unique movie-watching experience!


In the morning, we enjoyed the scenery in Wanaka, as Erik headed out for a mountain bike ride while Carlie and I took a long walk around the lake. Around midday, we said goodbye to Mark, our awesome accommodation, and the fantastic town of Wanaka before hitting the road to the West Coast.