Hey everyone it’s Alex! We’ve spent the last week or so finishing up our adventures on the South Island of New Zealand. After spending one night in Okarito, outside of the glaciers, we headed down to the Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea area. A little over halfway there we stopped to do a day walk to the Young River at the Blue Pools. We were a bit disappointed to see that the parking lot was really crowded when we pulled over. However, we found that all of these people were just there to do the 20 minute walk to the Blue Pools (exactly what it sounds like, natural pools of fresh blue water) while we opted to continue down the trail for another hour or so. The Blue Pools were beautiful and were begging for a swim but it was a bit cold and crowded so we opted not to go for a dip. We found an nice, open area alongside the river and decided we’d hang out there for a bit and eat our lunches (typical PB&J, apple, trail mix, and a granola bar). We enjoyed the solitude, skipping rocks and Jack trying to teach us how to cast a line when fly fishing (Rach and I weren’t very good, Jack made it look much easier). Jamie also taught us how to play a question and answer game called Buccachelli (no idea if this is the right name or how you spell it) which was a great way to pass time while on the trail. After our successful day walk we finished the drive to our campsite right on Lake Hawea. We were lucky to snag a secluded corner spot of the campsite (it was a holiday weekend and a bit crowded) and we could see the lake as we laid down in our van. It was beautiful.
The next day was Monday but since we’re a day ahead of the States down here at the bottom of the world it was actually Super Bowl Sunday! We were lucky to find ourselves near Wanaka, which is one of the more popular tourist towns so there were a handful of bars that were showing the Super Bowl. I won’t say that Jack and I “made” the girls hang out at a sports bar all day, but it’s fair to say they weren’t as interested as we were (we found ourselves lucky they were willing so thanks Rach and Jamie). Eating greasy Turkish food, drinking beers in a bar and watching football was a nice luxury we rewarded ourselves with after some grungy camping. It was funny that we were able to find such a normal Super Bowl experience halfway around the world. The only difference was that the game was aired on Australian ESPN and there were no US commercials! Something you don’t think about until you’re not stateside.
After our day of rest watching the Patriots lose (sorry Tommy, you can’t win ‘em all) we packed up and left our campsite at Lake Hawea. We headed to the Rocky Mountain Summit trail that was recommended to us at the local Wanaka Visitors Centre. We were lucky to have a beautiful clear day and the hike led us to a 360 degree view of a nearby glacier and of Lake Wanaka. It was pretty stunning. We were all in agreement that this was a perfect hike in terms of difficulty and being rewarded with an amazing view. After eating our lunch at the summit we headed back down to our cars and began our drive down to the Fiordlands area of the South Island. Driving around New Zealand you start to take all the scenery for granted. We were consistently amazed by all the huge lakes that were surrounded by steep, rugged mountains. Growing up in California we were already pretty spoiled with beautiful scenery for our whole lives but I tried to imagine growing up somewhere that is all flat (like the Midwest) and then coming to New Zealand…all of the giant mountain ranges and diverse landscape has to be incredible (more so than it already is).
A quick tangent here, the South Island is pretty big and we spent a lot of our time in our van driving to our next destination every day. We like listening to podcasts to pass the time and Jack and Jamie recommended us a good one called “Dirty John”. If anyone is a fan of podcasts (similar to Serial), then we highly recommend giving it a listen. It can be a bit chilling at times, but it is an insane story. We got so addicted to it that we laid in our van before bed one night and listened to the final episode (true story). It particularly hit home with me because it takes place in Newport Beach and Irvine! Right near where I grew up and my Mom currently lives.
The Fiordlands National Park is home to the famous Milford Sound. This whole region of New Zealand was carved by glaciers and is full of huge valleys with crazy steep mountains. We stopped by an i-SITE (a tourist information office) and booked an early morning (9:00 AM) Milford Sound cruise for the next day. We stayed at a minimal government campsite outside of Te Anau for the night and woke up to a freezing morning. Like really freezing. I know we’re from California and are wimps with the cold but even Jack (who grew up in Michigan) was in his Long John’s, so you know it was cold. It was an extra cold, hour long drive to Milford Sound because the heat in our van didn’t work. The Fiordlands region is supposedly one of the wettest regions in the world but we were lucky enough to get a sunny, clear day on the day we did the cruise. It was still pretty cold on the boat though because even though the sun rises at 6:30 here, the sun doesn’t make it over the steep mountains until 10:00 AM or so. We enjoyed taking in the beauty of Milford Sound on the two hour cruise. Our luck continued and we even saw some Bottlenose Dolphins up close! After the cruise our plan was to do a hike called Gertrudes Saddle that was recommended to us by a Park Ranger as her favorite hike in the area. She described it as “pretty hard, and if it starts raining you should turn around because you have to climb over some rocks”. Jack and Jamie weren’t feeling a long hike (coming from Chile they’d done more hiking than us at this point) but we (mostly me) were still keen to give it a go since it was a nice sunny day. I had a bit of deja vu back to when I booked us the caving adventure in Phong Nha, Vietnam because on the way to the trailhead Rach told me multiple times “How hard is it? I mean I’m down for the hike but if you don’t want to then I’m good”. I still insisted we try it out even though we really didn’t know how hard it was going to be. Right as we start the hike we were greeted with this lovely sign:
That sign was enough for Rach to turn around but I ensured her that that was probably just in the winter and when the weather is bad, nothing could happen to us on a nice sunny day. Things got off to a bad start because I led us off the trail and we had to hack through some bushes to get back on the trail. Oops. We continued the easy walk and got to the point where we started an incline. And the incline didn’t stop. As we climbed higher and higher we started to see a ridge-line that looked like the top of the saddle because we could see people on it. By the time we got close to it we were sufficiently tired and we both agreed that even if it wasn’t the top we’d just go to that point. Well we finally got up there only to find out that it really wasn’t the top of the saddle. From this point we could see the real top. I mean we got this far so we figured we had to keep going (Forrest Gump moment). We got encouragement from people that passed us on their way down saying “you’re getting close” and “the view is totally worth it”. At this point in the hike we were walking up sheer rock:
The description from the Park Ranger made a little more sense now but she was definitely in better shape than us because she didn’t make it sound too difficult. After an hour and a half of climbing uphill we finally made it to Gertrudes Damn Saddle and were rewarded with an amazing view of the valley that led all the way to Milford Sound where we were on the cruise earlier in the morning. An exhausting hike but we rested and enjoyed the view from the top for an hour. Overall, the experience was your typical challenge where you aren’t enjoying yourself during it because of the difficulty but when it’s over you’re glad you did it. I talked this hike up a bit because it was a crazy and exhausting hike for Rach and I, but the trail was very crowded with all kinds of people so we weren’t special for doing it. After the long hike we drove to a nicer campsite, a holiday park, where we agreed to meet Jack and Jamie. Luckily they secured a site for the four of us earlier in the day and Rach and I were able to enjoy a nice, hot shower when we got there. We cooked a heap of Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner and it was delicious.
I’m going to sum up the rest of our South Island activities in bullet points so I don’t go on and on:
- After Milford Sound we spent a night just outside of Te Anau (the closest city to Milford Sound). We stayed near Lake Manapouri (one of the many beautiful lakes surrounded by mountains) and spent the evening swimming, reading, cooking dinner, and playing cards right at the beach on the lake. We enjoyed the lake pretty much to ourselves.
- From Manapouri we drove to the popular city of Queenstown. We did a short hike called Jack’s Point that was just outside Queenstown and enjoyed views of Lake Wakatipu. For most of our time in New Zealand we’d all planned to have one nice night out in Queenstown where we would have a nice dinner and get some drinks. In our very crowded holiday park (most places were sold out so we were lucky to get a spot in town), we drank a couple bottles of wine and played multiple games of Euchre before going out to dinner. This could’ve been a bad decision because after finishing the wine we feasted on a big, delicious dinner. Our eyes were definitely bigger than our stomachs and it seemed like we all just ate in silence. We got so full and tired that we didn’t bar hop like we originally planned but it was still the fun night we had hoped for. The next day Jack and I enjoyed burgers from a famous place called Fergburger (they had gluten free buns).
- Another tangent here for anyone that is gluten free: move to New Zealand!!! That’s a bit dramatic but seriously this is the most gluten free friendly place I have ever been. I was surprised by the amount of gluten free options in Europe (particularly Italy) but New Zealand has been a whole new level of gluten free friendliness. The GF bread at grocery stores is delicious and I have stuffed my face with starchy products that a gluten free diet usually lacks. Even little road stop gas stations in the middle of no where have had gluten free muffins or cookies. It’s insane. The Milford Sound cruise ticket we bought included a bacon sandwich and they even made me one with gluten free bread! After getting sick for a week in Chiang Mai, New Zealand has been food heaven for me.
- Leaving Queenstown we headed to Mount Cook and the surrounding area. We picked a campsite off the map by somewhere called Lake Ohau. It turned out to be just another beautiful blue lake that we spent the afternoon on (again we were the only ones there). Unfortunately our good luck with weather ran out and for our last day in the mini van it was raining in all of Mount Cook National Park. We were pretty bummed out that we didn’t get to do a nice hike in the area but it was out of our control. Rain or not, Rach came down with a cough and a fever so a solid hike would’ve been out of the question anyways. We were sad to leave Jack and Jamie from here but agreed that we’d have to meet up on the North Island. We spent our last night in the van relaxing and doing laundry at a holiday park.
From here we’re taking a flight from Christchurch on the South Island to Wellington on the North Island. We had a blast exploring the beauty of the South Island. After playing tourist in the busy cities of Southeast Asia the solitude of camping was very refreshing. We also felt lucky to travel with Jack and Jamie and had an awesome time with them! Rach and I had done some research on New Zealand but pretty much followed Jack and Jamie and their itinerary the whole time. It wouldn’t have been the same without them!
The countdown of the final days of our trip begins but we look forward to exploring the North Island and eating more gluten free food!