Wanaka and the drive to Franz Josef - December 31, 2009

Today, New Year’s Eve, we started our day in Wanaka, which is a town not far from Queenstown. We thought the two towns would be similar, but Wanaka did not appear to be as beautiful or exciting as Queenstown. Because we arrived in Wanaka late last night, we had to get our keys from a lock box. When we got to our room, we found out the hostel had mistakenly put us both in a male dorm room. That meant I had to bunk with 5 guys. Three of the guys were travelling together from Israel and one guy was Brazilian. We spoke with them for about 15-20 minutes, before they went out for the night. So, the male dorm room was fine since I really didn’t see any of our bunk mates. This morning, we walked around a bit in the town and had a great lunch at an Indian restaurant. Colin had venison and I had some lamb. Both were delicious.




On our way out of Wanaka, we stopped by a place called “Puzzle World,” which has a life size maze in it. We didn’t want to pay the $15-20 to go in, so we took a few photos by the leaning tower outside.



Our drive from Wanaka to Franz Josef took us through the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Since we’ve already posted so many amazing mountain photos, I won’t post more here. We did stop after about an hour to do a short (5 minute) hike to another waterfall.





We soon emerged to the West Coast of New Zealand. The road skirted along the ocean at times and there was one primary viewing point, where we took a photo. Not far from the viewing point, there was a 1 hour hike to the water that brought you to an area where penguins and a seal colony exist. We decided to take a break from driving to do the hike, but found out the penguins have left their spot for a few months to be in the water. Even though we didn’t see any penguins or seals (we didn’t walk the extra 2 miles), it was still really nice to be alone on the beach. The sand was pretty rocky and I’m sure the water was cold, so we just walked a bit. Colin says he prefers a deserted beach to anything else in the world!!

Once we left the beach, we decided not to make any more stops until reaching our destination (Franz Josef). The road went back into the mountains, where we swerved on some serious “S” curves for about 45 minutes. We passed the town of Fox Glacier, where the first of two glaciers in “Westland Park” are located, but we didn’t stop because Franz Josef is the other glacier town. Since it is New Year’s Eve, we opted to pay a little more to have our own room versus sharing with others. After unpacking our bags, we decided we should do some laundry since we have been wearing a lot of our clothes multiple times and we are about halfway through our time in New Zealand. We don’t expect to have to wear my long sleeve dry-wicking shirts or pants in Australia and hopefully won’t have too much more cold weather now that we are heading north towards the warmer weather.

Our New Year’s plans are pretty low-key – meaning we have none! We have an ice-climbing expedition planned for tomorrrow and we need to meet the guide at 7:45am. Plus, since neither of us drink, it doesn’t make sense to stay up to party in the hostel. We plan to get a good night’s sleep in our own room before a day long ice climb.