Day 10 - We're on the road again early following the scenic route to get from Manapouri to Queenstown. What a contrast! Where Manapouri is quiet and natural, sleeping against it's beautiful lake, Queenstown is robust and packed with entertainment. It is the "activity capital" of New Zealand. Paragliding, jet boating, rock climbing, hiking, bungy jumping (first bungy - ever - was in Queenstown), kayaking, helicopter tours, horseback tours - you get the picture, Everything! There are shops, restaurants and bars and hordes of tourists. It is amazing! No camper food today, we have lunch out and dinner out and check out the night scene. Whew, full day.
Day 11 - Enough "over civilization", we are off to catch more of the back country beauty. First we stop in the little gold mining town of Arrowtown. There is a restored Chinese community from the gold strike days of the late 1800's. The town is purely a tourist attraction now and has fashioned all of it's new buildings along an old streetscape style, with a few "real" oldies tucked in between. Now we are back in the central part of the south island, only 40 km west of Cromwell and since we don't want to travel any road twice, we choose to go up over the Crown Range on our way to Lake Wanaka. What a splendid choice this proved to be. Initially, the road climbs steeply uphill and begins very sharp, steep, switchbacks to gain the rapid ascent required to get onto the top of the range. The views back over our trail are jaw dropping as we can see as far away as Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu that it sits beside. The pass tops out at 1076 m above sea level, which I know is not Rocky Mountain standards, but still very impressive because it is straight up and over. This track used to be a sheep herding trail. Speaking of sheep herding, on our descent, what do we run into but about 4000 sheep being herded along the highway to their next grazing ground. They have the right of way and there don't seem to be any people around, they just keep running up the road, bordered by the guard rail on one side (a sharp drop into the river below) and the rock cliff on the other. The traffic squeezes along the road in between gobs of sheep. Finally bringing up the absolute end is a single guy and a dog! Crazy! We are entering some of NZ's best snow skiing country now - no snow right now of course - they do have some very lovely hills/mountains though. Lake Wanaka and the same named town are our stopping point tonight. After a quick buzz around the town and a beer at a local pub, we head further up the road to a quiet bay on the lake where we find a spot backing onto the lake to park up. Real nice. The sun has come out, the wind has calmed and it feels like a day at the lake should.
Day 12 - Today we are headed right out to the west coast. Our road takes us beside beautiful lakes, over another mountain pass, by blue rivers (glacier fed), more regal mountains and inviting rolling hills, out to the wild wind swept west coast and the Tasman Sea. We stop at a couple of natural sites of interest - blue pools and some view locations. The best stop was a hike through the rain forest out to Monro Beach, about 1.5 km. Just a pebbled beach surrounded by steep rocky cliffs with a creek mouth empting into the ocean. But it is wild and beautiful. The sea is actually very calm (as far as seas go). There is a colony of crested penguins that breed and nest here, but now is not the season, so we don't see any. We imagine that the small moving things we see on the jutting rocks further out to sea are penguins, but its probably just seals. Our rest time is spent picking up round, smooth, stones off of the beach. We are like a couple of crows giving each other the beautiful stones we have picked to admire. New Zealand is a walker's/hiker's/mountain biker's paradise. They have trails for public access, everywhere. I mean everywhere! Short distances (which we like) and long distances - many day treks. They've invested a lot of money into making their beautiful country visible and accessible to everyone by installing gravel paths, board walks and hanging bridges. It really makes us wish we had more time to spend here. So many walks, so little time. Fox Glacier is our stopping town tonight and we choose a Top Ten Motor Park to stay in. It has no scenery, but it does have brand new shower blocks and it's time for a little luxury.
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