Mount Aspiring Inspires

Hokitika is jade country, and we hit a couple of the workshops and jewelry stores around town to admire the unique greenstone and to pick up a few souvenirs. But we didn’t come to New Zealand to shop, we came to hike, and our target hike for the day was two hours south. We took a coffee to go and hit the road to Fox Glacier, the less-famous (and less jammed with tourists) of New Zealand’s big glaciers. We passed Fox’s bigger cousin, Franz Joseph, and stopped for a photo op along the way and were thankful to miss so many tour buses.

A short, rocky hike across a couple streams took us from the car park to the furthest lookout point for the glacier. The route was posted with warning signs about the dangers of unguided hiking on the glacier past the marked trails, complete with a news article from 2008 about several tourists who died when part of the glacier collapsed, creating a giant wall of water. We stuck to the track and were plenty happy to be a mere sixty meters away from the giant river of ice. The pictures we got only show a small portion of the ice sheet; it curves and twists its way up another few thousand meters into the top section of the mountain.

From NZ Developed

The photogenic Lake Matheson was just around the corner, and we took the gentle hour-long walk around the edge, hoping to capture the reflection of Mount Cook in the lake’s dark water. Mother Nature had other ideas, though, as a light but steady afternoon breeze chopped up the usually smooth lake surface, and there wasn’t a alpine reflection at all. We met a few travelers from Israel who recently quit their jobs to travel for a year. One mentioned that our three week vacation was “a short holiday, given the weather, no?” Apparently, they hadn’t the luck we had with the weather and hit rain a couple times, meaning every couple of days, they were cooped up with nothing to do. We’ve had nothing but sun and 25 degrees celsius for the most part, beautiful summer days, every day.

Off we headed for our longest drive yet: three and a half hours nearly straight south, through Haast Pass, over the Alps again to Wanaka, in the heart of Southland. Haast is near the edge of civilization, a tiny hamlet of 300 with the last gas station for 120km. We stopped for dinner at the Antler Inn, and nearly stepped into northern Wisconsin. Antlers of all shapes and sizes hung from the rafters, and locals huddled around the formica-topped bar capped with a faux-leather edge. All that was missing for a true Wisconsin supper club was wood paneling and a walleye fry.

Haast Pass took us through Mount Aspiring National Park, part of the expansive Southern New Zealand World Heritage Zone, one of the largest nature preserves in the world. We curved along the milky waters of the Haast River through the valley, stopping several times to view waterfalls just off the roadway.

From NZ Developed

Once again, our timing was impeccable: we hit the park just as the sun started to set. The mountain peaks went from bright gold to orange to purple as we drove, offering fantastic views and providing us a boost of energy after a long day of hiking and traveling.

From NZ Developed

From NZ Developed

We hit another great hostel in Wanaka, this one parked on top of a hill overlooking the expansive Lake Wanaka with more sunset-kissed peaks as a backdrop. What a terrible time.