All good things come to an end, and today was the day. We got up, drove back to Queenstown, and took one last opportunity to eat at Fergburgers.
We dropped off our faithful hire car and boarded the plane. Haere rā, New Zealand.
The flights home (via Sydney), were uneventful. We arrived back in Perth Airport around half an hour ahead of schedule, and were ferried home efficiently by Fiona’s dad (the true MVP in all of this). It was a wonderful trip to a wonderful place, and we feel privileged to have had the opportunity to see the sights.
You can’t visit the south island of New Zealand and fail to visit Milford Sound. They turn you back at the airport if you can’t produce photographic evidence. We left relatively early to drive the route, and even the scenery on that road was pretty astounding.
One upside of the recent heavy rains in the area was an absolute plethora of waterfalls running off the mountains.
We saw Kias on the road! They were hanging around the queue of cars before the Homer Tunnel, bother tourists for food and/or car door rubber seals.
Herewith, a giant photo dump of the extraordinary fiords of Milford Sound. Words don’t really do this place justice. It’s just so different from anything I’ve seen in Western Australia that it feels like a different planet. The first picture is Mitre Peak, which towers 1690+ metres above the water.
Seagull photo bomb!
The Sound is more than 300 metres deep at its deepest point. Those sheer cliffs just keep going down.
There are a couple of permanent waterfalls in the Sound. Below is Stirling Falls, which we got extremely close to and extremely wet from at the bow of our tour boat.
A couple of lazy juvenile seals, sunning themselves on a rock:
Touring the Sound was a highlight of the NZ trip for us all. The landscape is jaw-dropping. Words don’t really do it justice. On the way home, we stopped to admire some of the scenic places that we passed over on the way here, including a portion of the Routeburn Track.
Overall, an amazing day. Unfortunately, it also marked our final “proper” day of holiday. Tomorrow, we head back to the airport at Queenstown and fly home.
Today we are leaving Queenstown, but we decided to have one last hurrah by jumping into a canyon. Jamie took it for the team and went first.
Fiona and Leah went next, in a beautiful mother-daughter tandem fall:
And finally, Ashley doing his best impression of a sugar glider:
After that excitement, we calmed down with a leisurely drive to Te Anau. We spent the rest of the day strolling around town, doing a little food shopping, and having dinner at the local Asian fusion cafe (Ditto).
Tomorrow we’ll be visiting Milford Sound, which should be a highlight of the trip.
For the first part of this day, we decided to drive to the nearby town of Glenorchy to hike one of the nearby scenic trails. Sadly though, the weather didn’t co-operate today. A heavy cloud cover and light rain dampened our enthusiasm enough to call this visit off early. The surrounding mountainous areas look amazing, but today was not our day to admire them properly.
Is this European holly? We weren’t sure, but it looked like it.
Back in Queenstown, we headed to the Kiwi Park. This is a local zoo and conservation park. It was established many years ago on a former dump site, and now hosts a variety of local fauna for education and breeding programs.
An actual kiwi, in the nocturnal house!
The local native pigeons are little chonkers.
We got a closer look at a kiwi, albeit a taxidermied one. This guy is looking okay for being over 70 years old.
It’s a beautiful park, planted with a variety of local native species. They are progressively removing the introduced pine trees and replacing them with the native sequoia species.
Having thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the park, we turned our attention back to town. A visit to the sweet shop was in order.
Dinner that evening was “Japanese tapas”, at Tanoshi Cow Lane. Funny name, delicious food. Highly recommended as a dinner destination. We gobbled it up so fast that we hardly got in the obligatory food pic.
The final event for the day was a visit to Minus Five ice bar. The supplied coats and gloves are extremely necessary – the place is kept bitterly cold. Great cocktails, and a very (literally) cool experience.
The drinks glasses are made of ice too, and you get to smash them at the end! So satisfying.
No idea how that manage to get the ice in the sculptures so clear. They’re like glass.
Then, it was time to head home again for our final night in Queenstown.
After the adrenaline-soaked activities yesterday, we decided to have a more chilled out day today by visiting the nearby Remarkables ski field and hiking up to the nearby Lake Alta.
Lake Alta is a very pretty body of water.
Extremely excitingly, there was honest-to-goodness snow on the ground around the lake! This might be garden variety common in these parts, but it’s pretty rare to see snow in Western Australia.
I was 46 years old before I got a chance to throw a snowball at someone.
Just one of the wide diversity of minuscule plants in this area.
Back down the mountain to Queenstown again. The kids were broken by this point, so we left them in the motel and went strolling around. This really is an unreasonable beautiful area.
They perked up enough to come out for ice-cream after tea, though.
Today was all about doing some of the cool tourist things in town: riding the gondola, racing the luge, and flying through the trees on ziplines. Subsequently, we didn’t get a lot of photos today. It’s hard to hold a phone while you’re racing a cart down a hill. Queenstown is just as stunning as anywhere else we’ve visited so far.
It was an action-packed day, and we were a little crushed by the end. Dinner was simple meat in bread, but it was still outstanding (hot roast lamb, plus fresh bread from Ferg Bakery). Another great day on the south island.
Wanaka and surrounds are just unreasonably beautiful. The lake is also home to the most Instagram-famous plant, #ThatWanakaTree.
The main activity today was rock climbing. We took ourselves off to a nearby waterfall canyon where a “via ferrata” climbing route has been established.
After the triumphant top-out and victory brownies, we headed back to town to chill a bit.
After a coffee and snack, we hit the road towards Queenstown. Cue more picturesque mountain passes.
We found our accommodation, moved in, and admired the gorgeous view over the lake.
Dinner options in town are many and bountiful. We chose correctly: Mexican, at Margo’s. They served us up a delicious dinner, especially the mushroom tacos.
Thus satiated, we headed back home for bed. Tomorrow should be a big day.
We got up before first light to head out for an activity we’d been anticipating keenly: a plane flight out to a glacier near Mount Cook, followed by a helicopter flight back. Unfortunately, the heavy cloud we drove through yesterday followed us here and the morning flights had to be cancelled. With a full schedule, we were unable to fit into a later flight that day and we had to accept that it wouldn’t happen today.
Disappointed, we decided to make the best of it anyway, drive to the nearby Hooker Valley track and hike this landmark. We set off in heavy fog.
There are three suspension bridges on the path, all of them fine examples of engineering.
We broke up the hike with a spot of geocaching.
We eventually reached the end of the track – Hooker Lake. To our great delight, there were icebergs floating in it! We assume that they were pieces of the nearby glacier.
We explored the lake edge, relaxed a little and balanced some stones.
Having spent a while by the lake, we were all set to head back down when the universe threw us an unexpected prize. In the space of a few minutes, most of the fog obscuring the surrounding mountain range evaporated. It was like a curtain being drawn back to reveal the snow-capped peaks in the background.
It was pretty awe-inspiring to view the scale of the mountains that had previously been hidden from us. It was still a consolation prize for missing out on our flight, but we wouldn’t end the day disappointed.
The hike had ended up being a wonderful experience. From there, it was time for a late lunch in the town of Twizel. We finished up the rest of the day with the journey to Wanaka, by way of picturesque Lindis Pass.
Our accommodation in Wanaka turned out to have a pretty nice view over the nearby lake of the same name. Tomorrow will be more of an opportunity to explore here.
After a leisurely breakfast, we decamped from Christchurch and took the inland scenic route towards Lake Tekapo and our final destination of Glentanner. This was a reasonable drive, but we broke it up with a stop off at Rakaia Gorge to hike part of the walk trail beside it.
The gorge is an impressive landform, and the river through it is a brilliant cloudy blue colour. The section of trail we hiked was a fine time, and we finished at an impressive scenic lookout.
Following this, we jumped back in the car and headed towards Geraldine. The weather during this drive was foggy and heavily overcast, obscuring any view of the nearby Mount Hutt and other features. We were actually feeling a little bummed out at the prospect of bad weather around Lake Tekapo. Then as we drove up through Burkes Pass, the clouds parted and the sun shone.
We honestly couldn’t have asked for a better dramatic reveal of the taller range of mountains around Mount Cook (Aoraki). We oooh’d and aaah’d all the way to Lake Tekapo.
We gawked at the lake, skipped stones, and then went to relax at the local heated pool. Niiiice.
Afterwards, we found an early dinner of burgers before heading back down to the lake to enjoy the golden hour.
Finally, it was time to head to our accommodation up at Glentanner. We organised ourselves for a very early start: we’ll be up at dawn tomorrow for a flight to a glacier near Mount Cook.
Perth to Melbourne to Christchurch, on the red-eye shift.
I only look grumpy cos it’s an hour past my usual bedtime. The flight was fine.
Looking cheerful for a relative time of 2 AM.
Just in case we forgot where we were…
The Airbus A380 has no business flying. It’s an absolute monster.
Early breakfast, and then catching up on missed sleep in the lounge during the stopover.
Kia ora, Aotearoa.
Collected our cute little hire car, packed our bags (just!) and made our way to the motel.
Despite a powerful urge to sleep, we dragged ourselves out for some dinner. Somewhat at random we picked a place called Cassels Brewery, which turned out to be an excellent choice.
After that, there was just time to look around Sumner. Coastal summer vibes, plus dessert.
Finally time to crash into bed and catch up on the sleep debt for the last 36-odd hours.
