adventurethroughtravel: April 17th, Franz Joseph Glacier to Queenstown

We awoke to clear blue skies and started heading south towards Haast. We drove up a dirt road for 5 kilometers to view the fox glacier and then went over a twisty mountain and down the coast. The Hast region has wetlands alongside large stands of rain forest flanked by beautiful beaches and is labeled a World Heritage site in large part due to the variety of birds and marine life living in a pristine native state.

At Haast we headed inland up the Haast Valley which was carved out by an ancient glacier we are traveling between completely forested hills but as you get nearer the pass where golden brown grass becomes much more predominant. There are many waterfalls along this section of road. This route is a major entryway to Aspiring National Park and Mount Aspiring is the highest peak outside the Mount Cook region of New Zealand.

Eventually we are traveling along the shores of Lake Wanaka . This is a fairly arid area and it is very reminiscent of Lake Okanogan in the B.C. interior with a long mountain lake about a kilometer and a half flanked by grass covered hills rising steeply on each side. We then crossed over a range of hills to travel along the shores of Lake Hawea until just shortly before we arrived at Wanaka, a pleasant laid back town that many New Zealanders prefer to Queenstown.

We then headed over the Crown Range Road via Cardrona, a magnificent stretch of road that crosses the Crown Mountains and has a dizzying decent into Arrowtown, a half hour drive to Queenstown.

Queenstown is known as the Aspen of New Zealand with its’ skiing and outdoor orientation, a former mining town from the 1860’s, its’ 8600 population and huge tourism business. It certainly is very upscale but it also has something that Aspen doesn’t, water frontage with Lake Wakatigu. It also is New Zealand’s adrenalin capital, with sky diving, bungee jumping, jet boats, whitewater rafting, skiing, hand gliding etc. It also has excellent shopping, top rate accommodation and restaurants and an active party scene.