Southland

Location: Te Anau

Well we've finished with the west coast - for now at least. We spent a lazy couple of days in Greymouth and at Franz Josef Glacier, then headed inland to Lake Wanaka and its township.

Greymouth's a small, rather bleak ex-gold mining town. At one point I'm sure it was a bustling center of trade, but since there's not so much gold-mining going on these days it seems to have become a ghost town. However our hostel there, Noah's Ark, was really great and we hung out with several other travellers whose paths we've been crossing and re-crossing as we all meander southwards. The hostel go its name due to the fact that it once provided living quarters for the priests of the church next door, and when it remained untouched through several floods which severely damaged the city and destroyed the church in the early 1900s, they decided someone upstairs must've been keeping an eye on it. :)

We spent longer than anticipated in Franz Josef - 4 nights total - as I was coming down with a cold. We were able to offer a couple hours of work each day in exchange for our accommodations, so we figured we should take advantage of the free stay to rest up and avoid the ample rain in the area. The glacier actually comes down into an region of temperate rainforests, and they say it rains some 180 days out of the year. We didn't go hiking on the glacier, but we walked up the glacial valley to the terminal face and got a good look at the lower half. Hopefully some time over the next year we'll return to do a full-day guided hike, the only way to really get up on the ice and take a look at the cleanest parts and the ice caves, etc. Had a good time kayaking on Lake Mapourika. When we set out the conditions were mirror-like and since there was no wind we cut right across the water like a knife. It looks like hematite or mercury, all silver and black reflectivity.

Then we got to Wanaka. And we fell in love with Wanaka. It's a small town right on the edge of the third-largest lake in NZ, Lake Wanaka. The day we got there was hot and clear, and the water's amazingly blue. Not like Carribbean aqua, but like a blue M&M or something. Unbelieveably blue. The town is small and cute, not super touristy (a nice change), and filled with Kiwi vacationers. I think our bus driver said it was one of the top holiday destinations in the country. Understandable, with all the water sports, hikes, horse riding, vineyards, and ski mountains found in the immediate area. We only stayed two short nights, but have plans to return in the spring to find jobs for a couple of months. For now we'll continue our circuit, testing out new places and making mental notes of where it's worth returning to for more extended periods.

As soon as we crossed the Southern Alps on our trip from Franz Josef to Wanaka the scenery changed dramatically. The mountains around the glacier, the ones covered with temperate rainforests, receive almost all the moisture held in the winds that come in off the Tasman Sea, leaving nothing for the land East of the Alps. This makes for big, craggy, bare mountains, and scrubby, dry pasturelands. Except where irrigated the fields are mostly tan in color, and the only thing that seems to grow on the mountains are pine trees. Pair this with numerous bright-blue glacial lakes like Lake Wanaka, and you've got quite a view. It's really beautiful in a massive, raw kind of way.

Queenstown, the commercial and cultural center of this alpine lake district, is home to all extreme sports imaginable. Kiwis like dreaming up far-fetched and dangerous ways to entertain themselves. Hence the invention of Bungy Jumping in 1988 on a bridge shortly outside of Queenstown (at 43m high, it's now one of the smallest bungy jumps available. There's one in South Africa that's something like 500m high!). It's also supposed to be a great area to do a skydive, as the scenery can best be taken in when you've got a good vantage point. We only spent a night in Queenstown so far, but we found it to be a lot more charming than we had expected, given its extreme-sports-plus-partying-tourists reputation. We'll stop there again when we finish this leg of the journey.

So that brings us to Te Anau, our home for the moment. As we drove down from Queenstown the fields turned greener and the mountains more rounded and it really grew to resemble the UK. The older couple sitting in front of us on the bus were Irish, and they were telling the driver they felt right at home. Te Anau's a tiny town, with not much going on, but it's the gateway to Fjordland National Park. On Wednesday we'll be heading out to Milford Sound for a cruise. Cross your fingers it doesn't rain TOO much (some is acceptable, but I need to be able to use my camera without destroying it!). If we can figure a cheap way we'll also head to Doubtful Sound. I'd realllllly love to get there but it's much more inaccessible and much pricier. But supposed to be so so so beautiful!!! Then we'll return from this little tangent back to Queenstown, and onwards to the East Coast.

We're hoping to find work for a couple of months near Dunedin or Cristchurch, or somewhere in between. The land and the climate there is much gentler than the West Coast or Southland, which would save us from having to buy a whole wardrobe of outdoor gear just to keep warm and dry day to day. Though we have been discussing the merits of opening our own pie shop (savory AND sweet) and demolishing the competition. I don't know how a country full of intelligent, globally aware people can be contented with the baked good we've had the misfortune to encounter. Not a decent pastry in sight!