bus ride to lake wanaka

From Fox Glacier, we took a bus to Lake Wanaka, and I know one rarely hears praise for bus rides, but it was one of the most beautiful bus rides I've been on.

(I was mesmerized by the color of the water.)

To answer the sheep to people ratio, it used to be 20:1, but as of 2008, it's only 8 sheep per person. (New Zealand has a population of about 4.3 million people, most of whom live on the north island. One-third of the population (about 1.4 million) lives in Auckland alone.)

We were running ahead of schedule, so our driver let us get off at Bruce Bay, where some (rumor has it) Peruvians started cairns (rock piles) a few years ago, and now, everyone stops, puts a rock on a cairn and makes a wish.

We didn't pick the prettiest rocks, but we made our wishes and put our stones on a cairn, too. (I think my partner may have picked up a piece of asphalt (2nd from top), but anyway.)

We stopped for some delicious homemade scones covered in raspberry jam and fresh cream:

And learned that the Kiwis farm deer:

Then, we stopped to switch bus drivers and got to take a walk through more jungle to reach Thunder Creek Falls.

So, the motto of our trip to Australia and New Zealand seems to be summed up by this t-shirt:

(And yes, you know someone's cheap when they take a picture of a t-shirt. But, to be fair, I wouldn't actually wear it...)

fox glacier and lake matheson

Fox Glacier was a great example of New Zealand geography. And we got really lucky with the weather, too. It had been raining the day before, but when we woke up, this was our view:

We took a bus to the foot of the glacier, where we saw beautiful turquoise pools of water, some milky and some clear:

We walked through the glacial valley, where the glacier was just fifty years ago.

I thought we would walk to the bottom and climb it. But no, we were to veer left and hike up and through tropical jungle to approach the left side of Fox Glacier.

We could see the glacier through the trees:

There were lots of nice little waterfalls along the way:

When we got to a clearing, we could see the valley that had been carved out:

Snow-covered mountains across the valley:

And just how long Fox Glacier really was (about 13km):

It was cool to see the blue of the glacier against the white of the snow:

After we hiked through jungle (about 800 steps up), we walked down these stairs towards the glacier:

And there she was:

We strapped ice spikes onto our hiking boots and had metal-tipped walking sticks to help us walk on the ice:

The shade of blue inside the crevices was beautiful:

And we got to explore ice caves:

It was also neat to see how smooth and rounded the glacier was in some areas (near the cave) and how jagged and lined with sediment it was in others:

Here is our group hiking up Fox Glacier, away from the glacial valley:

As we were leaving, we spotted the other group on the glacier (we split into two small groups):

Bye, Fox...

The glacier trek was one of the coolest things I've ever done, and I would highly, highly recommend trying it.

After returning to the small town of Fox Glacier, we walked about 6km to Lake Matheson, the calmest lake I've ever seen.

We also hiked through jungle to reach it, but it was definitely worth it:

I'd never seen such a clear reflection in such a large body of water. Too bad it was a bit overcast, as Lake Matheson's reflections of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman are supposed to be absolutely incredible.

In any case, we had a nice walk back to town:

And were treated to a peek of (what we think was) Mount Cook changing colors with the sunset:

I know sunset photos get boring pretty quickly, but I've never seen a mountain this shade of pink-purple. I don't tamper with my photos, and this is exactly what we saw. We had been rushing back to town because it was supposed to rain, but we were stopped in our tracks by the sight of the mountain.

(We beat the rain.)

And I may just be one of New Zealand's biggest fans now. Aside from being beautiful, it was also voted the most peaceful country in the world (per the 2009 Global Peace Index Report).

So, yeah, I'd live there. And it doesn't hurt that one usually flies from the States to New Zealand via Fiji, either.

christchurch and the tranzalpine train

We had high expectations for New Zealand, and we were still blown away. California is neat in that it has oceans, deserts, snow-covered mountains and forests, but in New Zealand, all of the extremes are right next to each other.

On the west coast, driving south, you'll have snow-covered southern Alps on your left, tropical jungle around you and beaches to your right. It's magical. No wonder they filmed the Lord of the Rings trilogy there.

We flew into Christchurch, known for its English influence. Here's the Avon River and a few other shots of the city:

We stayed in a former prison, called (appropriately) Jailhouse accommodation.

We took the TranzAlpine across the south island to Greymouth. It's supposed to be one of the best train rides on the planet, and it lives up to its reputation, starting with bucolic meadows and farmland that transform into endless ranges of towering snowcapped mountains and finally into rolling hills and forests before arriving in Greymouth.

At one point, high in the southern Alps, we stopped and saw the kea, a mountain parrot. Like Australia's desert parrot, I didn't even know mountain parrots existed.

The water in the rivers was a beautiful milky green color (we learned it was glacial water). It's a little hard to tell in these photos, but that's just another excuse for you to go and see it all in person.

We were pleasantly surprised to find this rainbow-colored house in the middle of the mountains:

And it seemed like before we knew it, we'd arrived at our destination.

From the tiny town of Greymouth, we took a bus down to Fox Glacier, where we actually got to tramp around (a lovely Kiwi expression) on the ice.