2/8/14
It's been a full week since I last wrote, and that week has been extremely eventful. Accordingly, I have taken almost as many pictures over these last seven days as I have during all of my prior time here in New Zealand. My parents and I left Blenheim immediately after my last post, and we made our way westward into Nelson, where we checked in to the Grand Mercuire hotel. This last week traveling with my family has been a welcome break from constantly staying in hostels; they're always a great time, full of friendly and energetic people who, like me, are out to see the world, but the quality of these hotels I've stayed in recently is appreciated tremendously. Many of the buildings in Nelson demonstrate a very traditional English sort of architectural style, and our new hotel was no exception.
Just across the street was a similarly quaint little English pub, where we took the majority of our meals during our stay in Nelson. The pub was called 'The Honest Lawyer,' which I thought to be quite funny, though the humor was lost on my parents, both of whom practice law.
We stayed in Nelson for two nights, and we were happy to discover that the Speight's Ale House there was showing the Super Bowl on all screens. It didn't prove to be much of a game, but as this isn't a blog focusing on sports commentary, we won't be dwelling much on the analytics of that. All I'll say is this: good on ya, Russell, for getting yourself a ring and doing Richmond proud.
The acclaimed Abel-Tasman national park lies just outside of Nelson, so we were determined to drive out there to pay a visit after being prompted to do so by so many people we've met in New Zealand. There we encountered the biggest beach that I personally have ever seen in all my life, with sand stretching out towards the water for what I estimate to be at least half a mile. In that sand, I left a very patriotic mark of our passing:
Just across the sand was a striking range of mountains, one of which was cloaked in a perfect blanket of clouds.
We made our way down the west coast of the South Island after departing Nelson, heading for some of New Zealand's most iconic glaciers. We pulled off the road to stretch our legs on a hike to the famous 'pancake rocks,' which proved to be well worth the time invested. I can best describe them as narrow towers of jutting rocks that rose up out of the ground, each being multi-layered and looking much like a mineral stack of pancakes.
We also encountered an incredible surge pool right next to the pancake rocks, where you could watch swells of water come rolling in from the Tasman sea and crash upon the rock face, spewing a watery mist high up into the air.
We stopped off in Franz Josef after about six hours of driving, where we would be able to access the acclaimed Franz Josef glacier for which the town was named. The morning after our arrival, we went on the necessary hike to access the glacier (or glay-seeah, as the Kiwis call it), and were blown away by an array of gorgeous waterfalls scattered along the trail.
At the end of a short hike, we were greeted by a rising wall of blue ice sandwiched between looming mountains on either side. The glacier was a real sight; the intense blue color it displayed from top to bottom stood in stark contrast to the dark rock of the surrounding mountainsides.
The spectacle that the Franz Josef glacier and its surrounding waterfalls provided us proved to be the perfect stop to bisect our drive south to Queenstown, and well worth the slightly later start that we got off to on our drive that day.
We expected our only stop on our second day of driving to be the popular Lake Wanaka that lies just outside of Queenstown, but we happened upon another short hiking trail that led to a waterfall just after getting through the Haast pass, and we quickly elected to explore it. This again turned out to be an excellent decision, for the waterfall proved to be one of the most magnificent I've yet seen in my travels here, despite a ridiculous amount of sand flies upon the nearby riverbank. (Sand flies, by the way, are a nasty sort of bug here in New Zealand that bite you relentlessly, leaving unpleasant red spots on your skin that itch like crazy and always remind me of the chicken pox).
Our last stop approaching Queenstown was Lake Wanaka, as expected. Though I had previously heard much about the lake, nothing prepared me for what I encountered. The lake was enormous, and equally beautiful thanks to the sprawling mountains surrounding it. This, I thought, must be the beginning of New Zealand's best impersonation of the Great Lakes.
Like many of the New Zealand landscapes I had encountered before, the lake was absolutely stunning, and I found myself hard-pressed to keep my eyes on the road after we'd piled back into the car to resume our journey to Queenstown.
This is what a road in New Zealand looks like.
After a short drive from Lake Wanaka, we rounded a bend in the road and found ourselves upon a vista looking out over the valley in which Queenstown is nestled. It's a spectacular valley, and I was immediately filled with a sense of overwhelming satisfaction that this was the place I'd be calling home for the next six months.
I've been in Queenstown for several days now, but I think it would be best to recount that experience in a separate entry. Which, fortunately, I will begin composing immediately after posting this one, and will likely contain just as many photos, most of which I snapped during a helicopter tour of Milford Sound.
To be continued (very, very shortly),
Jack
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