The Heart of the South Island

“The North Island is beautiful, but the South Island is majestic.” “The North Island is lumpy, but the South Island has real mountains.” “The North Island is nice, but the people on the South Island are much friendlier.” “So, which island do you like better?”

We’ve heard these things from South Islanders, and that final question is not really meant as a question. The South Islanders love the South Island. And, well, as far as natural beauty goes, the North Island is beautiful, and the South Island is majestic.

We spent three nights in the town of Wanaka. (Wanaka rhymes exactly with Monica.) The elevation here is only 1000 feet, but the mountains rise up and ring the city, and it felt like we were high up in a mountain village. Wanaka is in the Southern Alps. This is a mountain range that runs for hundreds of miles. The highest peak is Mount Cook, also called Aoraki, at 12, 200 feet. There are sixteen peaks over 10,000 feet.

Wanaka has a population of about 8000 people. It is full of people with backpacks and boots and trekking poles, planning or coming back from serious backpack trips. We went on three day hikes and spent a few hours swimming in Lake Hawea while we were there. The first hike was up Mt. Iron, which is right in town, and almost obligatory for the newly-arrived.

Wanaka is right on the shore of Lake Wanaka, and there is a trail that goes a few miles along the shore. There’s a tree growing in the lake that has become famous through Instagram. Hundreds of people make the pilgrimage each day to take a photo and post it on their account.

The next day we drove a bit out of town to Diamond Lake, and hiked up the mountainside for some big views.

Walking is a pleasure. Sometimes the uphills get a little too uphill, and sometimes the sun gets a little intense, but the simple act of walking remains one of our greatest pleasures. To pick a place to go to, then go there and just walk. Nothing more. It gets us to some awesome places and lets us spend the days in beauty.

Queenstown!

The exclamation point is part of the town. Queenstown is the adrenaline capital of the world. Some folks just fly in for a few days to get their hit of adrenaline, then fly right back out. People come here to bungy jump, skydive, paraglide, leap into space on the world’s largest swing, and/or be launched into space on the world’s largest catapult. The swing isn’t really a swing. You are harnessed and roped, then you are suspended 1300 feet over a river canyon, then the trap door opens and you just drop and swing out over the river. The catapult is recently opened, a year and a half ago. You are harnessed and roped over the Nevus Valley, then suspended horizontally. Five four three two one, a switch is flicked, and you are jet-launched at sixty miles per hour, five hundred feet in a straight line, then you drop 1500 feet and swing for a while before they reel you in. Afterwards, all these adrenaline-filled and pumped people come back to Queenstown and party all night.

Later on, if you want to cool down a bit, you can have a drink or two in the Ice Bar. They give you warm jackets, then you can go in there and freeze. It’s a novel experience for people who come from places where it never gets cold. I don’t think our friends from Northern Minnesota (Hi Lawson, Hi Lynden) would get too excited about it.

Throughout New Zealand there are young people from all over the world living and working. They are here on a work holiday visa, up to one year. You have to be between the ages of eighteen and thirty to get a visa, and it seems to be a good thing for all parties involved. New Zealand needs workers in the tourist and agriculture industries, and it is a wonderful place for somebody in their twenties to spend a year. We’ve met people mostly from the USA and Europe, but NZ issues the visas to most countries. Meanwhile, international tourists keep arriving. Queenstown is vibrant, stunning, breathless and beautiful, exhausting, and a wee bit artificial.

A Little Hike

Moke Lake is a horseshoe-shaped lake, less than ten miles out of town, nestled in the mountains. There’s a trail around the lake. It took us about two and a half hours to walk around it. Far from the madding crowd.

On to Glenorchy, and a Change of Plans

We left Queenstown in the rain and drove fifty kilometers up the lake to Glenorchy. This is Southern Alp country, with mountains rising up everywhere. For us, however, the only thing we could see was thick grey clouds and lots of water coming down. We stayed in Glenorchy for two days, and we were grateful for our dry warm airbnb. The rains continued, the rivers rose over the roads and landslides slid down on them, and a state of emergency was declared through the south part of the South Island.

The mountains near Glenorchy are famous for being the backdrop for many scenes in Lord of the Rings. It’s also the jumping off spot for a few of New Zealand’s Great Walks, including the well-known Routeburn Track. There is a hiker’s hut on this track, not far from Glenorchy, and it was hit by a landslide one of the nights we were there. Thirty one people were helicoptered out, and the trail itself was washed out. The middle of summer, it took everyone by surprise.

The roads leading into Fjordland National Park were closed due to flooding and landslides. We were planning to go there, and we were looking forward to an overnight boat trip out on Doubtful Sound, a remote fjord deep in the park. We had to pull out our tablet and cancel and come up with a new itinerary. We left Glenorchy with plans to head back to Wanaka, then head to the west coast. A little disappointing not to get out to the fjords, but…..On to the next adventure.