Glaciers to Town of Queens

Heading into glacier country was a fairly interesting experience for a few reasons, we were able to see first hand some pretty impressive landscape and the driving landscape was beginning to change into something new. Next we quickly realized that things were ridiculously expensive, especially being on the west coast of the south island were only a small percentage of the population lives. The tours of the glaciers were both brief and limited, apparently do to some dumb tourists back in the day you're restricted to the edge of the glacier. They say a guide is required to go further and guides costs money so we routed to view it from the base. Although we managed to get distracted on the way back by some interesting waterfalls along the route.

Conquering both glaciers, Franz Josef and Fox, in the same day we then settled for a night along the coast. The following day was spent searching for penguins along the coast with no avail; we missed them by a month apparently. We put a few km's on the van as well, but not before stopping to take a bath in the aquatic blue river and seeing the power of the Gates of Haast. We ended up in the small resort town of Wanaka just before supper and I was excited to see the town the next day due to travel advice given to me by some friends back home.

Being in the Wanaka area you quickly notice the diversity of New Zealand, but it was also a kind reminder of home as well. The flat landscape with tall hills/mountains jutting out of the ground covered in dust and dirt reminded us all quickly of the Okanagon. The three days in town were spent viewing the town and all it had to offer including the triathlon that was ongoing throughout the first two days there; which we did not compete in thankfully. The weather was off and on so we took advantage of the sunlight hours and toured about and spent the rain filled hours inside catching up on emails and messages but apparently not the blog!

We departed Wanaka on Sunday afternoon after being awoken by the ranger telling us that apparently theres an 800 dollar fine for "camping" near the boat lunch to which we replied with confused looks as to what he was talking about; we didn't see any signs. But we were happy once again being on the road and with some more excitement in the van because next stop was Queenstown, adventure capital of New Zealand is a safe label for it. We planned the first thing to do when we arrived in Queenstown and that was book our 134 meter bungee (AJ Hacket's "The Nevis Highwire Bungee".) Which we did within the first 5 minutes there.

Lates, N8