Vacation Itinerary

First I would like to say thanks to Caleb who did all the driving and did a wonderful job driving on the wrong side of the road! -Kiara

Ok, here it is...

We will have separate and longer posts regarding each day's activities (Hopefully with pictures!) when we get around to it. For now though, a superficial summary will have to suffice.

Day 1-Drive to Milford Sound
We stopped in Te Anau to gas up before heading out to Lake Gun to spend the night at a DOC campground. Woke up to snow falling!

Day 2- Milford Sound!
A beautiful drive down the historic Milford Road at dawn...a great view of the snow covered mountain peaks at first light.
Mitre Peak Cruise on Milford Sound-we saw a pod of dolphins!
Historic Homer Tunnel-A rough hewn, steep, one way tunnel through a mountain. When we entered we were below the snow line, when we got to the end, there was nearly three inches of fresh snow on the ground!
Picnic at Lake Gun Campground
Stop at the Mirror Lakes (Ponds really) in one of the numerous mountain valleys we drove through.

Day 3-Queenstown Area
Twelve Mile Delta Recreation Area- Spent the morning exploring some very interesting side tracks off of the main path. Beautiful scenery surrounding the Twelve Mile Creek, a smallish river with plenty of waterfalls and rapids. Kiara added to the rock collection...
Skyline Gondola Walk-Instead of paying the 17 dollars to take the 4 min ride to the top of Bob's Peak for the "Best View in the World", Kiara and I decided to walk up the access road...quite a bit longer than four minutes. The view from the top was well worth the hike up and down, though I would say that their "Best View in the World" claim was somewhat exaggerated.

Day 4-Drive from Queenstown to West Coast
Crown Range Scenic Route from Queenstown to Wanaka-Beautiful, though slow and windy, road through the Crown Range.
Lake Hawea Lookout-Worth mentioning due to the great view and the fact that the road was blocked shortly after due to a heard of cows!
Blue Pools-This short walk from a car park on the highway brought us to a beautiful, and aptly named, crystal clear blue pool where a tributary drains into one of the main rivers. The water was not flowing very strongly when we were there, but the DOC had a sign nearly 15 feet above the river's surface indicating the flood level in the 1990's!
Fox Glacier Terminal Face walk-As we made it to the Fox Township at around 3:00 in the afternoon, Kiara and I went to Fox Glacier today instead of waiting until the next day. The glacier was very impressive, though not nearly as "clean" as we thought it would be. The terminal face was full of mud and "rock flour" (ground rock), though we could see that further up in the mountain the glacier was much cleaner. The DOC "safety" line prevented us from getting any closer than 80 m from the terminal face.

Day 5-More Glaciers
Matheson Lake Walk-This small lake near where we were camped was reputed to have great reflections of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman on clear, calm mornings...we were not disappointed! The view was much more impressive in person.... our pictures don't do it justice. (Seems to be the case with most things...)
Franz Josef Terminal Face walk-This glacier was much more impressive than Fox (In my mind). This may be due to the fact that though the DOC "safety" line was 240 m from the terminal face, we decided to go past it and walk right next to the glacier! We even have a cute picture of Kiara "holding back" the glacier!
Wanganui River Hot Springs Attempt-While it was a good experiance, the numerous sand flies, tepid water, and lack of a shovel to dig out our own pool made us cut this one short. Hopefully we will find a better one at the end of the semester!

Day 6-More Fun
Galaway Beach Track to Galaway Beach Seal Colony from Gillespies Beach-The 3.5 hour walk through native bush was great, though we both felt that one seal does not make a colony...
Thunder Falls- Another highway stop to stretch out our legs. This five minute walk brought us to a very pretty 90 foot high waterfall. Not very impressive if you have been to Victoria Falls, but a nice chance to stretch out.
More Driving- We drove all the way from Fox Township to Mt. Cook! Though they do not seem as though they are separated at all on the map, the impassable mountains make for a tremendous amount of backtracking.

Day 7-Mt. Cook
H0oker Valley Track- This ~4 hour return walk brought us a close to Mt. Cook as we could get without DOC permission to go farther up the valley. The view of Mt. Cook was very impressive, though the scenery was somewhat diminished by the ugly, rock flour full lake and dirty glacier terminating the valley. (No one talks about it though, as we found no mention of the lake or glacier in any of our guide books....)
The Hermitage-According to our guide book, this is "arguably the most famous hotel in New Zealand". While it did have an impressive view of Mt. Cook, its very modern architecture, while very nice, seemed somewhat out of place. We did decide to get a slice of a delicious chocolate almond fudge brownie just to say we had been there though...
Red Tarns/Mt. Sebastapol track-Up...and up...and up...and up lots of stairs carved into the mountain! I kept remarking how I pitied the "poor fools" who had to build the path 784 m up Mt. Sebastapol...Kiara said that they were probably "college volunteers", and after a bit of discussion we came to the conclusion that "poor fools" and "college volunteers" were one in the same. We are glad the built the path however...the view was outstanding!

After our day at Mt. Cook, we decided to drive home as we were only ~200km away. (Much closer than we had expected)

We will try to work on more in depth descriptions as time allows.

Take care.

Caleb