Southern Lakes and More Glaciers

We spent several days in the Wanaka/Hawea area, continuously deciding in the morning to stay one more day, and one more day. This area is gorgeous. We kept our camp at Lake Hawea, which is much more chill than Lake Wanaka about 15 km down the road. Wanaka is a crazy tourist town full of tour operators, overpriced restaurants, and jewelry stores. Hawea has just a couple restaurants, one of which is also the town general store and coffee shop, and is just a friendly place. We stopped at the hotel/restaurant/bar/bottle shop after finding only expensive beer at the general store/cafeteria/restaurant and were able to buy just 4 bottles of beer after a complimentary sample from the tap to see if we liked it. So nice! [side note: as in South America, here "cafeteria" means "place that makes coffee".]

Aside from the nice town and the awesome site we got for our car along the lake, this area is chock full of walking trails ranging from leisurely strolls along the lake or river to multi-day hikes in the mountains. We took a lovely walk from our car through town and the surrounding farms & sheep to the base of the mountains east of the lake. There is a trail there leading to some views, but since we had walked about 7 km just to get to the trailhead, we only walked about 1 km further (through the cows) before turning around. On our way back, we took the trail along the lake shore. Beautiful and windy!

We also drove through Wanaka and up the lovely Matukituki Valley. After 30 km of gravel roads full of sheep and cows, we got to the Rob Roy Valley trail that runs along Rob Roy creek and to a view of the Rob Roy Glacier (Hil note: the glacier pics are for you, Mom, since we got rained out in glacier-land when we were here together). Now this is a spectacular glacier, with not just a river rushing away from it but a thousand sparkling cascades plunging down the sheer mountainside. Wow! If you're visiting NZ, do this walk.

(Hil note: the road sign is for you, Dad... the only difference being that we did not run ourselves into a hole and did not break our car... )

We were also gifted with a clear night and the awesomely bright full moon rising over Lake Hawea. To the south we could see the Pointers and the Southern Cross (it looks more like a kite...), despite the brightness of the moon that blocked out a huge portion of the stars. Stupendous.

Though we could happily spend another year here doing all the different walks, we've decided to head south and get to the "walking capital" of Te Anau, which is also the base for exploring Fiordland.