NZ: Christchurch to Wanaka

We flew Qantas from Hobart, Tasmania to Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday, October 11 to begin Phase 3 of our Down Under adventures. Althought it's the second-largest city in New Zealand, it is relatively small with a walkable downtown. The population is around 400,000.

We'd spent 5 weeks in NZ in 1987 and were able to see most of New Zealand, which is about the size of California. Christchurch was where we started our adventures back then, and the city has changed a lot in the last 37 years. Some of this is due, of course, to the two devastating earthquakes five months apart in 2011 and 2012. You can still see a number of building boarded up, and vacant lots where buildings were torn down. But there's been a lot of new construction since then also, so the city feels very modern. They recently opened up a new convention center, for example.

We also visited the new city library, which is amazing and modern inside and out.

One thing we really liked about the library was how they'd turned it into a thriving community space. The day we were there they were holding a big exhibition for families about Antarctica, with exhibits, games, scavenger hunts, and so forth. The place was buzzing!

We were also impressed with the childrens reading section, where they had 15 bookshelves of kids books organized by language to encourage recent immigrants to read to their kids!

Christchurch's gothic cathedral sustained major damage in the earthquake, including losing its bell tower. Although the building has been stabilized, they are still raising money for the reconstruction.

They've constructed a "transitional cathedral" in another part of town. The gothic cathedral was deconsecrated for its renovation so the bishop could have another temporary place for his seat. Locals call this the "cardboard cathedral." It's not actually made from cardboard, but it does include fiberglass and shipping containers, and cylindrical supports for the rood that look like they could be paper towel rolls.

The Avon River runs through the center of the city, although it's typically only 20-30 feet wide. We signed up for a punting ride on the Avon, which was lots of fun and took us past buildings, parks, and a couple of Maori war canoes.

It was Doug's 73rd birthday, and the punter offered to sing "Happy Birthday" to him in the Maori language!

After a couple days in the city, we went to pick up our campervan from Wilderness Adventures. This was nicer and roomier than the campervans we'd had in Australia, and we felt like we'd dropped into the lap of luxury (although the Ciaowagen is still our favorite, of course).

We drove into the hills south of Christchurch to visit a teahouse we remembered from 1987 called The Sign of the Takehe where we'd been able to get a full devonshire afternoon tea with scones and clotted cream. The building was damaged during the earthquakes but has reopened. Unfortunately, it's now just a cafe so we had to settle for a latte. The location does have nice views down into the city and the Pacific ocean.

Because it is so far south, New Zealand serves as a supply depot and transportation hub for a number of Antarctic bases. There are different warehouses near the Christchurch airport serving the Antartic science programs of different countries, including the U.S.

So fefore leaving the Christchurch area for good, we stopped by the International Antarctic Center.

The Center serves as a museum/theme park whose revenues help support some of New Zealand's Antarctic science activities. Among the activities were a ride in a Hägglund, a Swedish-built vehicle which can pull a trailer loaded with people and supplies over the ice and across glacial crevasses...

... and experience the arctic blasts from a winter storm (the wind chill got down to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit) for a few minutes in a specially designed room.

There was also a visit with husky dogs and a display of little blue penguins.

It was time to move on, and we departed Christchurch for points to the southwest. Christchurch is in a flat area of the country, but soon we were passing through rolling green hills where many, many, many sheep were grazing. including newborn lambs.

We stayed for a couple of days in the area of Lake Tekapo, which has an amazing turquoise color from the glacial flour suspended in the water.

The Church of the Good Shephard is a small stone building that sits right on the lake. It was open for visiting when we were there and is very simple inside it had none of the usual ornamentation one would expect to see in a Catholic Church. The only "ornamentation" was a large picture window overlooking the lake which provided the backdrop for the altar. Jeannette enjoyed visiting with one of the parishioners.

He recommended that we drive to the summit of nearby Mount John, which offers great views of Lake Tekapo, another lake, the town of Tekapo, and the broad plains reaching out to the Southern Alps.

There's a cafe at the top and when we ordered a latte we were reminded that Comet C2023-A3 would be appearing in the skies for the next couple weeks.

We checked the AllTrails app for suggested hikes and picked one about three miles long called the Lake Tekapo Peninsula Walkway. It took us through beautiful fields, around the shoreline of a bay, and past some sheep who were minding their own business. We only encountered a couple other people along the way.

We ate dinner in town and watched the Golden Hour light playing on the nearby hills.

Then it was on to three days in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, one of New Zealand's jewels that includes the highest peaks of the Southern Alps that run along the spine of the South Island near the western edge. It was a nice, cloudless day, and we could see snowy peaks running the length of the horizon as we drove into the park along the shores of Lake Pukaki.

The closer we got, the more dramatic the scenery became!

Since it was such a clear day, we scheduled a flight and landing on the Tasman Glacier, which comes down from the mountains and sits below Mount Cook. The Inflight tour company offered the opportunity to fly and land on the glacier and after about 15 minutes, board a helicopter for the return flight. The chopper could fly much closer to some of the features of the glacier, like the icefall and several avalanche chutes.

After takeoff, we first viewed the braided course of the Tasman River, then flew over Tasman Lake, filled with icebergs that have broken off from the Tasman Glacier. The lake has only formed in the last 50 years as the glacier receded due to global warming. Next we flew over the rock-covered lower reaches of the glacier, finally reach parts covered with snow and landing there.

Although the air temperature was only in the 30s, the sun's UV rays were so strong that we felt comfortably warm as we talked with the pilots and some of the other passengers.

Then it was back into the chopper for the return to the airport.

After our return to terra firma we drove to White Horse Hill campground, operated by the NZ Department of Conservation (the equivalent to the U.S. National Park Service). The campground could fit perhaps 150 RVs squeezed together. It was about half-full during our time there.

We celebrated our flight with some wine and cheese.

Interestingly, there are no entry fees for any of New Zealand's national parks. We asked a park ranger about this, and he told us that some the $100/per person visa fee we paid to enter the country goes toward national park funding. We did pay a modest camping fee: NZ$15/person/night, or NZ$90 overall (about $55 US$) for the three nights we stayed at the park.

We'd hoped to see the comet from our campground, but the surrounding mountains were so high that the sun set behind them long before actual sunset. We did take a few night photos of the peaks illuminated by the full moon and also saw the Southern Cross in the sky. It's easy to pick out the Southern Cross (yellow box) because there are two "pointer stars" (red box) to it. The outmost of the pointers is Alpha Centauri (our closest stellar neighbor) and the other is Beta Centauri (which is larger but about 40 times farther away.

The next day was sunny and beautiful. Morning temperates were in the 30s, but again the strong sun and clear air in the mountains helps keep you warm. Our main activity that day was hiking the Hooker Valley Track up to Hooker Lake. This is the most popular track in the national park, so we took of around 9:30 in the morning before the crowds arrived. Fortunately, the trailhead is right at White Horse Hill campground. The track is about 3.4 miles each way, and climbs about 640 feet vertically. However, the uphill is distributed all the way along the track so the climb did not seem burdensome. The views were beautiful all along.

One of the unique features of the track is that you need to cross three swing bridges to reach the lake. Jeannette is not very comfortable with heights, and she dislikes swing bridges in particular. However, we managed to find spaces where she could cross by herself without other people bouncing and swinging the bridge, so she made all six crossings successfully!

Hooker Lake is filled with icebergs broken off from the glacier at its end. New Zealand, in its civilized way, provided a very long picnic table by the lake where we ate our lunch and talked with other hikers.

On the return hike, we saw how the stream from the lake was blueish-green from all the glacial flour in the water.

On our last full day in the park we drove about four miles to the trailhead for the Tasman Lake trail (we'd flown over Tasman Lake on our airplane/helicopter experience). The trail first climbs steeply to a viewpoint over the whole lake which, like Hooker Lake, is full of icebergs.

On the way back down we had a view of the Blue Lakes. They were originally all blue because of glacial-fed streams, but with a reduced flow only the topmost lake was blue. The others were more greenish due to algae in the water.

The trail then continues along the edge of the terminal moraine of the Tasman Glacier - it's a ridge about 100 feet high of rock and stone that was pushed forward by the glacier at its fullest extent.The trail led us to the point where the lake empties into the valley...

...where its braided path finally takes it out to Lake Pukaki.

We'd made friends with an Australian couple, Rick and Kelly, who were camped next to us and who we invited over for wine and cheese in the late afternoon. They're from Melbourne and were visiting New Zealand on their honeymoon. We'd run into them a few times more in other NZ towns, so it must have been destined that we'd be friends.

On Saturday, October 19 we left Mount Cook and drove south. On our way we passed through rolling hills that reminded us of the semi-desert climate of California that lies between the Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada.

One thing someone told us during our 1987 visit was that if you took all the diverse beauty and environments of the U.S. and crammed them into a space the size of California, you'd have New Zealand!

We spent two days in the town of Wanaka, which sits at the end of a beautiful lake.

We used part of our time there to take care of "life," like grocery shopping, refilling our water tanks, doing our laundry, etc. We walked the 30 minutes from the campground into town. On our way, we stopped by to see one of the town's highlights, #ThatWanakaTree, which sits out in the lake and is very striking highlighted against the snow-capped peaks in the background.

We also passed this Dog Stick Library, from which you can borrow to have something to play with your dog.

Finally, we watched a mother duck and her fourteen tiny ducklings swimming along the shore.

It was time to continue our New Zealand adventures by traveling to Queenstown. But that's the subject for another blog post!