After having fun, relaxing and refilling our sugar and energy reservoirs in Queenstown…
…we headed towards the glaciers on the west coast. On the way we made some stops, e.g. in an old gold town (yes, there was a great gold rush in NZ in the 1860s), at Lake Wanaka and many beautiful lookouts…
Glaciers on the west coast of NZ go down to almost sea level (perhaps 300m), there is even rainforest not far (10 minutes walk) from it and it is relatively warm on the glacier. The reason, why they are still there is, it is rather steep, so they move fast and it rains/snows like crazy in this area, so the water/ice supply is much higher than somewhere in the European Alps. There are two glaciers, which are very easy accessible. This sounds good in the first place, however, this also means that tons of tourists arrive there by bus to take a tour on the glacier. So far, I have been many times to the edge of glaciers and looked down on them from a ski gondolas. On a glacier and into a crevasse – this was something new to me. Same for Thorsten. As Bernd told us that he did one of those tours and had fun, we booked a full day glacier hike – level “adventurous.” When we arrived, we got processed through equipment rental etc. and the journey started. Unfortunately it was raining all the time…
After putting on the crampons we started our walk on the ice.
The guide was cutting some stairs into the ice for a nice and easy tourist access Although we were on the first of four groups (first group moved quickly, the guide did only some smaller stairs, next guide got “our” steps cut a bit more comfortable), it was an easy walk with some steps up and down.
Of course, we found some cool places to have some fun… for example an ice tube
It was really cool to slide through this ice tube, there was only one problem… an ice tube is build by melting water making its way… and this water does not stop flowing when the tube is perfectly done… meaning… right, the trousers got pretty wet… Later on, our shoes were soaked… (it was raining the whole time – rain was dropping from the trousers in the shoes… slowly but constantly).
After this day, we had a looooong hot shower and a huge plate of pasta and enjoyed the luxurious feeling of dry and warm socks… *smiley laughing*
Our way was up to Abel Tasman National Park (in the north of the southern island), but there were more things to see on/near the road…
In Abel Tasman (the National Park with the golden beaches) we decided to rent a sea kayak and skip walking – at least for one way. There were many tour providers (as usual), but we definitely didn’t want to go on another tour after the glacier tour. Don’t get me wrong, the glacier tour was cool and it was really good to have a guide, but being packed into a group was enough for this week and finally we found a “sea kayak freedom rental”. Cameras in waterproof bags and the journey begins… Well, the waves were quite high for a kayak – we had lots of wind (20 knots, the white tips on the water start at 7 knots, the guy from the shop explained us)…
It was quite exiting with the waves, the instructor made sure that we are able to manoeuvre the kayak (we had to paddle a bit) and after he waved bye bye, the adventure began Another couple managed to turn their boat upside down, we were lucky (or skilled enough ) not to do so…
It was a really nice day, perfect weather (a bit windy though), we fully enjoyed it. However, we also have some lessons learned – a) the way to walk back by feet was much more exhausting than we thought (we had to walk each and every bay, couldn’t shortcut as we did with the kayak…*smiley winking*; b) ALWAYS take much more food and water with you than you think you might need (swallowing sea water from the waves make you thirsty!!)
Next stop: south island of New Zealand!