Harihari to Winton
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It’s raining! On our last full touring day too. What a bummer. Fairly heavy too and foggy. We can’t see much of anything. We’ve been pretty lucky with rain so far. Only in the Nullarbor, where it didn’t much matter, and at Greens Pool where it was pretty fun. In fact the only time it hasn’t been raining in Cairns in the last three weeks was the 3 days we were there.
This makes it so we can’t see the mountains, which was the whole point of coming this way. Ah well. We decided it was a message from the gods that we didn’t have time to linger looking at mountains if we were going to get to Invercargill and make our plane. So we resigned ourselves to just driving and headed out. It did make it look a lot like Oregon and reminded us of home.
We headed off to the town of Franz Josef, named for the glacier just up the hill (or vice versa). We figured we’d stop in the visitor’s center and get some postcards of what we were missing. We asked the lady there if there was any chance we could see the glacier in this weather and she said that yes, we probably could if we walked up to it a bit. Well, that sounded all right so we headed up the road to the glacier to see what we could see.
The glacier valley was pretty deep, with tall sheer cliffs on one side where the glacier had carved them out. Kind of like Yosemite but not nearly so tall. There were waterfalls cascading off the cliffs and down the mountains on the other side. With the mist over the mountains it was actually very pretty. We decided, what the heck, what’s a little rain to Oregonians and decided we’d at least hike out a bit and see what it looked like. So we donned our hats and what outerwear we had and headed off.
Glacier hiking is apparently big business in New Zealand. There were at least 3 buses full of people gearing up to go. It looked pretty funny because they were all wearing the same blue Gore-Tex jackets. The guides were in red. They looked like an elementary school out on a field trip. And just like school in Oregon, some of them were wearing shorts. It’s pouring rain, it’s probably 50 degrees, they’re going to hike on a glacier and they’re wearing shorts.
Anyway, the trail heads up the river valley formed by the glacier run off. After 10 minutes or so, we could see the glacier pretty well. The path out to it didn’t look so bad and we weren’t real wet yet so we decided we should go out and touch it. We followed along with the parade of blue-coated tourists (Germans, I’m pretty sure) and after a bit we started climbing up the loose rock towards the glacier. By now we were getting pretty wet and it was getting colder too.
We made it up to the face of the glacier, got our pictures, climbed around for a few minutes, then decided this was as wet and cold as we wanted to be and started heading back. We were like rental horses heading for the barn for awhile. But the weather started breaking a bit and by the time we were near the car park, it was only misting. But we were pretty soaked and it didn’t matter that the rain had stopped.
We got into dry shirts but decided the only way our pants would dry in time to pack them was to wear them, so we did. Not really a problem in the car, but for most of the rest of the day, whenever we got out to walk around we were reminded of our glacier hike.
We headed up the road to the next glacier, Fox Glacier. The sign at this glacier said it was named something else by the Maori, but when William Fox, the prime minister at the time came to visit, he “decided to rename it”. Well, he renamed it for himself, which was interesting. The sign seemed to suggest that he wasn’t a particularly compelling prime minister and it seemed surprised that the name stuck, but it did. We decided that we’d rename it for ourselves as well, since that seemed to be the local custom. And we now refer to it as the Hemmingson-Kessler glacier. And the first one is the Kessler-Hemmingson glacier. We plan to let the authorities know so they can change their maps. After all, it worked for Mr. Fox.
We learned our lesson from the previous hike and decided not to walk out to it. Although it looked a bit easier and shorter to get to. We put our wet clothes back on. No reason to get more clothing wet, and went out far enough to have a look, then back to the car. In the parking lot, there were a couple of parrots that had obviously become very tame from being fed. There were warning signs at other locations about how these types of parrots like to “playfully eat the plastic moldings on cars”. Luckily they didn’t do that to us, or playfully tear our eyes out or anything. We got their picture and fed them a few nuts to appease them.
We continued on through the mountains passed the Southern Alps and the tallest mountains in New Zealand, Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. Didn’t see a thing. It was raining really hard at this point. The road turned inland at Haast and followed the Haast river valley up into the hills. At a place called “Haast Gate” there was a single lane bridge over the river. The “gate” is a narrow part of the river where the water comes bounding through over large rocks. We stopped there for pictures and a little hike around.
As we continued farther inland the weather improved. First it stopped raining, then finally the clouds started breaking up and the sun came out. And while we missed the “main” mountains, the scenery was still pretty amazing. Sheep in meadows in front of snow covered mountains. And not just in one spot. It was like that for miles. We figured it must be pretty nice, as a farmer, to own a valley like that.
We passed a sign for “Roaring Billy Falls” and it sounded interesting enough to stop. We missed the turn so we turned into a gravel area passed it. There was a “road” heading down towards the river so we thought we’d take a look before turning around. It turned out to be a path that ran along the rocks of the river bank, that someone had marked with orange paint to show you the way. So we drove out that way, all the way back to the falls. While we were out walking around, a rainbow appeared off to one side. We took it as a sign we had gone the right way.
We came down on the other side of the mountains along Lake Wanaka. We followed that lake for awhile, then over a low pass to Lake Hiwea on the other side. Then down further into farmland and wine country. There was a river flowing through this area that was pushing a tremendous amount of water. It looked like the output of a dam it was so fast, but I guess it was just glacier runoff. It ran through a fairly deep chasm. There were no rocks in it. Looked like it would make a great kayak ride, if you weren’t planning to stop. Actually what it looked like was a flume ride at Disneyland.
It was nearing sunset and the end of our last full day. We had about 250km to drive to Invercargill but we weren’t going to see any of that road. We rounded a corner and were presented with a beautiful sunset up in the clouds above a tall hill. It was fiery red and orange and seemed like a fitting close to our travels. We stopped and photographed it and “waited for the curtain to fall”. Then headed south on our final drive.
We got to within about 60km of Invercargill when civilization started reappearing again. We couldn’t see much in the dark, but there wasn’t much out there. Very few lights, no towns. It was bout 9:45. We came through a town called Winton and saw a pub that offered accommodations so we went in to check it out. Their “rooms” were basically dorm rooms. We each got one to ourselves, although Les’ had a bathroom and mine didn’t. It was down the hall. But, it was the first night in a month where I won’t have to listen to snoring :-).
The beds sagged to the point where you were almost doubled over lying on it. It was like a hammock. This is a problem we’ve found throughout New Zealand and will be an overriding memory of the place. The beds suck. They were all like this although this was the worst example. I pulled the mattress on the floor for a little support and even with that, my rear end touched the floor when I sat on it. But it was no worse than sleeping in the van and didn’t bother me. Les and I were thinking that if we went into the mattress import business, we could make some real money here. But maybe not. They may like them this way.
Tomorrow is truly our last day. We’ve got half an hour to Invercargill and another 30 km to the southern tip, which we really must go to. Then onto the plane for the 3 day ride home.
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