Our final days in the RV following our cloudy, grumpy spell turned out to be pretty perfect! Sunny skies, picture perfect lakes and mountains, stunning waterfalls and great walks. Almost made us like the RV in the end….
Day 48 – Queenstown
Awoke to the sun shining in the window! Outside we could see mountains – we were right, we were somewhere beautiful!
There were bikes for hire here, which the lovely manager was letting us use for free as the TV room etc were all out of action whilst they undergo some improvements. The kids were keen, but unfortunately there were only adult bikes and Aiden’s feet were about half a foot off the ground. That was never going to work… He was pretty sad when we suggested Evie and Chris go for a little ride together. They disappeared off down the road leaving us with about 45 minutes to kill.
Aiden went to play in the park whilst I grabbed some things and came back saying he was too small for the park too. I joined him and held the zip line still whilst he jumped up. He hit his head on my elbow when he jumped up which of course made matters so much worse. Poor little guy. It was the worst day ever apparently, although he does say that a lot…
We went for a wander down to the lake shore towards the steam trains and carriages that were there but stopped on the beach where we found loads of super skimmable stones. Aiden loves stones, so we played there for a bit and got some smiles. Phew! Chris and Evie joined us on their way back past.
We considered walking along the shore here, but decided to head to Queenstown so we could see a different part of the lake and get some of the drive done.
It was lovely to be finally driving with visible mountains either side. We kept stopping at all the viewpoints to take pictures. This is what we’d been missing!
Queenstown turned out to be very different to Dunedin and Invercargill, clearly this is where the money is, with tons of new developments everywhere. We parked the campervan intending to either walk up Queenstown Hill or Bob’s Peak and then saw the gondolas. The kids of course wanted to ride it! Luckily there are trails up there and a ski lift with luges to ride down. It did look like fun so we paid and headed up.
The gondola was ok, but given how expensive it was I’m not sure it was worth it. It was a very steep hillside though so I was glad we didn’t have to walk up that bit!
The luge part was much better though. You effectively get unlimited rides on the chairlift, which takes you up to the top of the luge tracks. Between these there are paths that you can walk around on and you can head up higher still to the top of Bob’s Peak.
Of course, the first thing we did was get helmeted up and do a few runs of the luge track. Great fun as you get to steer them and control speed down a track like you’re in a go kart. The kids thought it was amazing.
We’d bought 5 rides each so after 3 runs we took a break and went for a wander up the hill. Which actually turned out to be quite a hike! I knew from reading online that you can walk up to a paragliding point for awesome views, which there were…
But there was also a path heading up higher, and people standing on a hill above us. The kids were not keen but Chris and I had been itching to get out and walk these mountains all day so it was not in question. The route up was pretty steep and finally on real footpaths (not gravelled with man made steps put in) so it took us over half an hour to get up there. So glad we did as we had amazing views all around. Sometimes I forget how much I love being up in the hills – especially on ridge walks. I love mountains!! The views on the walk back down were super special.
Back down for our last two rides, this time Chris tried the faster track. Aiden wasn’t allowed on the faster track due to his height, which was rather a sore point for him after the morning, but I managed to talk the guy at the top into letting him do it. Yay! This faster track has a couple of steep hills in it and sharper bends, but he did fine and totally loved it. They were literally jumping for joy afterwards.
A final ride up on the chairlift before running back down and getting the gondola back down again.
Our campsite choice was either one up through the pass to Wanaka (the route Google Maps suggested) or on the longer highway route around the edge. Given that the hills in question were covered in cloud, and that the route started with a very steep section that included a number of hairpins, we decided that we’d not take our big, heavy campervan through the pass and headed through the gorge on the side instead. Our campsite was a glorious spot next to a massive lake flanked by mountains. Yay 😊.
I think we packed enough into today to make up for sitting in the van (or café’s) a lot for the last few days!
Day 49 – Panning for gold and escaping the maze around Wanaka
Another sunny morning at our lake side campsite and warm enough to enjoy breakfast outside!
We headed back down the road a little to the Gold Mining place we’d passed in Karawau Gorge. This place was actively mined for nearly 100 years, using a variety of methods, so there’s a lot of history here. Now they’ve recreated the village and run a tour around it, including seeing some of the old machinery working. The site is set on a river, as are all alluvial gold mining sites, which runs a lovely blue-green colour.
Initially we walked around the trail, which takes you through the Chinese village. This was built for a film in the 90’s, but very much in the style of the old mining village which the Chinese immigrant miners lived in whilst working so you can get an idea.
After this we sat in an old style building whilst an ex teacher told us about the history of gold and gold mining. The kids did a good job of pretending not to be bored, as he was not trying to make it simple or interesting for them. Chris and I enjoyed hearing about the history of the demand for gold, and the four gold rushes; the kids had no idea what he was on about!
They were more interested when we headed out to an old piece of machinery used in latter times to crush the quartz rock and get the gold flecks out with the use of copious amounts of sulphuric acid, mercury and cyanide. Until these were all replaced with the new miracle method – arsenic!. Not a healthy occupation!
Then we got to see one of the original sluicing guns in action, basically a water gun used to fire pressurised water at the cliffs to erode the gravel from which the gold could be collected. The kids got to have a go at moving the gun, but their favourite part was when he started to turn it off and his dog ran in snapping at the water and leaping around.
After this he gave us a demonstration on how to pan for gold before letting us loose with the pans and a pile of rock from the riverbed. No guarantees that it’ll contain gold but you never know…
Evie and Aiden were really excited about doing this in the morning. I think they thought it would be fun and that they’d find gold, even though we kept telling them that it was unlikely. The rain had returned by the time we got there and it wasn’t as easy as Peirs (our guide) had made it look! None of us found anything (nor did anyone else on the tour). Not as fun a trip as the kids had thought, but educational which is another aim.
After this we drove around to Wanaka with the sun shining again – seemingly it was only raining in the gorge! Today we were able to view the mountains which flank the valley road. This area seems to be the one for fruit as there were orchards and vinyards lining the roads. We stopped at Puzzleworld just before we hit the town of Wanaka. This is a bizarre little place which has a 3D maze, illusion rooms and a café with loads of puzzles on the tables. We had lots of fun here, some of it before we even got in the doors!
The maze was calling us so we tried that first. There are four coloured towers and some bridges taking you over parts of the maze. The idea is to get to all four of the towers before finding your way out, which should take you between 30 minutes and an hour. Evie and Aiden wanted to team up and do girls vs boys (something we’d done before with family and the girls had won – Chris and Aiden had a score to settle!).
We went in and headed different ways. Initially Evie and I made poor progress, trying out a load of dead ends by the exit before trying to get the green corner. The boys ran past on the bridge overhead and we were worried they’d got the yellow one (which they’d been heading towards) already. The green one took us ages and by the time we started for the red one the boys reported that they’d got 3 already! We were getting thrashed!
Luckily the blue was easy and we had that one sorted quickly, but the red again gave us trouble. I could not figure out how to get to the red one! Luckily the boys were having even more trouble. We kept passing each other on the bridge (there are two lanes) and saying that we wanted to swap sides, but neither of us could find the way to change over! We found it first, resulting in us securing the red and the yellow in pretty quick succession, but the boys had headed over to get their final colour, the green and that was much closer to the exit. Not that we’re competitive or anything, but Evie and I ran back through the maze and passed the boys still looking for the green – haha! We’d made it out in about 30 minutes so were pretty pleased with that. We shouldn’t laugh, but the boys had a lot of trouble finding the green, and then even more trouble finding the way back out again (it took them about another 10-15 minutes). Tee hee.
We tried a couple of the puzzles in the café whilst cooling down before heading into the illusion rooms. These were really fun. There’s a room where the faces all follow you…
Another one where you grow and shrink…
And lots of optical illusions to blow your mind. The weirdest one was the room where the floor is at 15 degrees. With no windows or points of reference it really messes with you so much more than you’d think and we were staggering about. Then they can make weird things seem to happen like balls rolling and water flowing uphill.
Oh – and the toilets are hilarious! For the main ones you go in the door for mens or ladies and emerge into this one big room with Roman toilets. Haha – everyone who comes in does a proper double take.
The others have funny floors…
Loved this place!
We stayed in the puzzle room till it closed, failing miserably at most of them. They sold off their hot pies at the end of the day cheap so we relieved them of those. A cheap, but in no way healthy, dinner…
That hadn’t quite filled us up, but cooking now seemed pointless so we drove into Wanaka and bought a fish and chips which we shared on the shores of the beautiful Lake Wanaka.
The kids played in their playground, which was a good one with a strange dinosaur slide, whilst we strolled up and down the lake taking some snaps.
Back up the road to a car park which we’d seen earlier, from which you can walk up a hill. So far we’ve only free camped in places which are on our app. What we hadn’t done was just pull up somewhere, which is in theory possible if you abide by certain rules. We researched it online and looked at all the signs in the car park and could see no reason why we couldn’t stay there for the night (although we couldn’t load the map about the ‘pink areas’ which are no camp zones). Hopefully we won’t wake up with another fine… I’m a bit worried as the other RV’s which were here when we pulled up have all left, but the kids are asleep so it’s too late to go anywhere else now…
Day 50 – Walking and climbing in Wanaka
We got fined. Brilliant. Another £100 lost.
We walked up the hill nonetheless, Mount Iron, which is only a couple of hundred metres tall and just under a 5km round trip. It’s formed by passing glaciers so sits as the only hill in a fair bit of flat land, giving it pretty good views across the lakes.
The weather was perfect, and we got pretty warm walking up here. The far side is much more wooded, with some cliffs which you walk along so it’s a pretty varied round trip.
After this we headed back into Wanaka to pay our fine and with the intention of hiring bikes. Maybe it was the fine, or the walk, but we were all feeling a little lack lustre. In the end, we offered the kids some options of things to do in the area and they both voted for the indoor rock climbing around the corner.
We love to climb and have been doing it for years, we’d hoped to get the kids into it early, but Aiden had an early fear of heights and freaked out when he had the harness on, unwilling to go very high at all. Evie took to it like a duck to water though. Still, we haven’t been back much, but Aiden seems to have overcome his fear lately so we’ve been talking about going again. This seemed to be the moment.
The climbing here is a little different to anything we have in England. It’s all self belaying devices, which is great as we can all climb at once, but most are not ‘normal’ climbing routes. The holes are things like drainpipes, or ropes, or they have a timer so you race.
We were the only people there so had it all to ourselves for a (very pricey) hour of climbing on these strange routes. My favourite was the one in the ‘Dark Tower’ where you climb in the dark with glow in the dark holds. I liked that it was a chimney though so you have holds on two sides – my favourite type of climbing. Chris and Evie were all about the speed wall and trying to beat their times. Chris got it down to around 12 seconds and Evie about 32, but the record was 3.2 seconds so they were way off! We were shown the video of the fastest climber and it is mental, he literally runs up the wall on all fours! He lives locally and does practice a lot though.
Aiden tried a couple of walls, but the only one he liked was the metal link ladder which he managed to get to the top of – fear of heights gone 😊
Afterwards, we had a drink in the outside space whilst the kids played in the playground and were entertained by the climbing wall dog chasing the cat who lives over the road up a tree.
After this is was time to leave Wanaka and get to the West Coast. We had quite a few hours still to drive to get to the free site North of Haast and a few places we wanted to stop.
The drive past Lake Wanaka and to Haast had been billed as one of the most scenic drives in the whole of NZ so we were expecting a lot. We were not disappointed. From Wanaka the road heads up to the bottom of Lake Hawea and you then drive along the shore.
Then it switches to the left of the hills and you are on the shores of Lake Wanaka again for the rest of its length. We stopped frequently for pictures and to look at the gorgeous snow capped mountains. The pictures don’t do it justice!
The road then travels through a forested valley (mostly native) with a few possible stops like waterfalls and the Blue Pools. We stopped here and took the 10 minute walk down. Annoyingly some cloud had come over and we were treated to a heavy shower on our way down. We tried to wait it out under the trees, but it seemed pretty insistent so we continued over the suspension bridge to the pools. These are rightfully named but we were a bit sad as the raindrops meant you couldn’t see into the crystal clear water to look for trout on the bottom. We hid under a tree and waited a few more minutes in the rain so we could see them properly and checked out these stone piles that people have made in the adjacent river bed.
Our wait was rewarded with a better look into these blue pools – no photo enhancement at all!
We were pretty hungry by now so we took advantage of the RV and cooked a speedy dinner by the road side before continuing the drive in the encroaching darkness. By the time we reached Haast it was dark, but we made our free site just in time to put the kids to bed. And just in time for the last spot. Almost all campsites so far had been almost empty with it being low season. But this one was rammed, 15 vehicles are allowed but there wasn’t really much space here in this narrow stretch of land so we had to pull up alongside someone else and block them in for the night – didn’t want to do too much revving and moving of the truck at 10pm when it looked like most the vans had their lights out!
Day 51 – The Franz Josef glacier and Lake Matheson
Our campsite turned out to be at the bottom of a cliff. After a couple of people had headed out we were able to move our van out of the way at least and then turn it around so we could leave ourselves!
We had planned to visit one of the accessible glaciers, either the Fox or Franz Josef. My favourite teddy as a child was a fox so I’ve always had a soft spot for them and had planned to visit this one but when we arrived at the Fox Glacier town we asked about and found out that the road to the glacier has been flooded, and also that the path to the Franz Josef glacier gets you closer to the terminal edge. We were also told about the beautiful Lake Matheson, which is famous for the reflections of Mount Cook in its calm surface, so we actually headed there first.
Lake Matheson is simply stunning. There’s an easy trail around the lake via a series of viewpoints. Luckily, a lot of people go to the first and then head back, when in fact some of the best opportunities to get that reflection shot in the lake is actually further on. A blue lake, with wooded slopes and the snow capped Southern Alps as a backdrop. Pretty breathtaking.
With views like this you can see why we chose to stay in the café here for lunch. There aren’t many café’s with this outlook! That’s Mt Cook and Mt Tasman in the background…
We spent a few hours here, soaking in the view in the sun (and charging electronics and taking advantage of the free wifi…) before heading slightly down the road to a viewpoint of the Fox Glacier.
Then it was on to Franz Josef. Our walk to the Franz Josef glacier was excellent, but also pretty sobering. They have posts which show where the glacier used to be. Back in 1918 it was nearly 2km further down the valley. In 2009 it was a km further down. That’s a pretty massive increase in glacier retreat! The route takes you through some forest to the moraine dump from 1918 into the wide, stony riverbed, lined with waterfalls.
Aiden was very excited to walk along the riverbed and asked if we could run to the end. I wasn’t too keen to get that hot and sweaty, but said he could run on ahead – I could see most of a mile ahead and didn’t think he’d really run the whole way. He did. He ran the whole way to the glacier view point, meaning I had to get a very fast walk going to keep him vaguely within sight near the end. At least we got an extra 10 minutes at the view point before Chris and Evie caught up!
As the end of a glacier can be unpredictable and it’s now pretty far uphill in the valley, the viewing point was 750m away, which was further away than we wanted, but still much closer than we’d gotten to the Hooker or Tasman glaciers on the other side.
The walk back went at a slower pace, with Chris making up a story along the way to keep the kids entertained.
There were a couple of free campsites near Franz Josef, but that would mean a long drive to get to the pass in the morning and less time to walk, so we carried on into the night to get to the next free one over an hour down the road.
Whilst we headed through Hokitika we saw a sign for the ‘Glow Worm Dell’ and a couple of people were heading up the path. It wasn’t quite dark yet but we pulled up and walked up the 300m or so to a roofless cave where there were about six people and three or four tiny dots of light. Glow worms! More were appearing so we decided to head back to the van, eat our dinner and then get out again in about an hour once it was properly dark. The benefits of RV living again…
When we returned to in the dark (with torches!) we were very pleased we had – hundreds of tiny glowing lights, and more appearing as your eyes adjusted. It literally looked like the night sky on a good day. Magical. Sometimes it’s the unplanned things that are the best! Unfortunately photo’s really didn’t work so you’ll just have to imagine it…
Not the greatest campsite tonight as it’s just off the main road and near the railway line – a car park at a cafe, but it’s free. We pulled up in the dark again so we’ll have to see how rubbish it is in the morning.
Day 52 – Arthur’s Pass
We seem to be blessed with the weather at the moment. Another gloriously sunny morning in which to drive up and over the mountains through the pass. And with a view over fields of horses to wake up to the campsite wasn’t that bad after all!
No longer are we reminded of England in any way, New Zealand’s hills and mountains are totally different in that they arise, often on their own straight up from flat valleys and plains. There are no foothills here. There’s also this awesome viaduct to get you across this scree filled valley…
Once up over the top of the pass there is a small town built on a flat area called Arthur’s Pass. Around here there are lots of walking tracks. We picked a couple, which end to end added to about 9km. We parked at the top car park and walked down through the initial low alpine scrub and then into alpine forest. The route was very undulating, but generally downhill towards Arthur’s Pass. There were little Rifleman everywhere, tiny olive birds about the size of our wrens but less shy, hopping in the branches at the edge of the path. They may be my favourite bird of NZ, beating even the Albatrosses.
The route gives great views of the surrounding mountains, like Mount Rolleston.
We had our sandwiches at a cascade in the sun, sheltering from the chilly wind, and finished the Arthur’s Pass track down by the town. From here we could see the Devil’s Punchbowl falls, which are visible from the road. A 1km track gets you to the bottom of these 130m falls which we planned to take.
Wow there were a lot of steps to get there, loads up, quite a few down and then a few more up for good measure, but it was worth it! Chris thinks it was the most beautiful waterfall he’s ever seen. I think he’s probably right. An excellent combination of water dropping off an edge and racing down in individual droplets, almost racing each other down, but mostly turning into vapour before reaching the bottom. All this in a beautifully framed canyon, and for the majority of our time up there, we were alone.
This marked the halfway point of our walk and, like many in NZ, these are all one way tracks, so the way back was retracing our steps. In the UK we’re very spoilt for choice on footpaths and so returning by the same route is avoided pretty heavily. Actually, things often look very different so I’ve come around to heading back the same way now.
After returning to the RV, we moved it the 3 minutes drive down to Arthur’s Pass, which was slightly depressing as it had taken us over an hour to walk down there…
There’s not much to this little town, a couple of café’s and a few places to stay. We headed into one which had a load of Kea’s (clever mountain parrots) hanging around outside for food scraps. They literally take the food off your plate if you’re not careful!
We rewarded ourselves with some cake and drinks in the café and used their free wifi and plugs for a couple of hours, enjoying the mountain views from the window.
We had intended to stay in another free campsite, but the first two on the app were either no longer free or no longer for camping. There were no others on route so we picked a cheap pay option. It was easily the cheapest site so far but had frolicking calves in the field behind the van, power, a very friendly owner and a playground, as well as some super clean toilets and showers. Not bad for £10.
Read on for our last few days on the South Island, heading up through the whale capital Kaikoura before taking the ferry across the Cook Straight (coming soon) or recap on our previous troubles in the clouds and rain…