Glenorchy and Lake Wapatipu ; Gibbston Valley and Cromwell ; Te Anau ; Milford Sound
(posted from Postmaster Cafe, Riverton, NZ)
(This post covers 4 - 6 March, 2013)
-----------------------------
Wednesday, 6 March -
Last night we had problems with mosquitos. We slept well for a couple of hours but one buzzed by my ear and I got up to check. I whacked seven of them arrayed around the ceiling. This isn’t good. We thought we had identified why we were getting some mosquitos but obviously not--- we shouldn’t have this many inside just from opening and closing the doors and windows through the day.
We both went on a mosquito-seeking mission and I’d say we knocked off two dozen or so. We tried sleeping again but it didn’t work. We were up several more times from 0300-0600, each time frustrated with the situation we obviously weren’t controlling.
We arose groggily around 0730 and got on with the day. We drove further north toward Milford Sound and knew right away we were in for a cloudy and wet day. We did get a few photos of a rainbow before we lost the sun entirely around 1000.
The Te Anau valley just keeps getting better and better the further north you go. The turns in the road get tighter and tighter and start rising toward the pass. The mountains around us were impossibly high.... more than 70 degrees up to the tops.
We eventually came to the Homer Tunnel which was the scariest tunnel we’ve ever been through. Our headlights barely lit the road in front of us and the overhead lights were so weak they may as well not have been there at all. The walls were very rough-hewn rock and the road only partially paved with trenches running alongside. The speed limit is 30 Kph or about 18 miles per hour and even that seems too fast. Oh, yeah.... and the tunnel road runs fairly steeply downhill (if you’re headed for the Sound). It’s safe enough, just spooky compared to other tunnels.
When we came out of the long, long tunnel, the road went into a series of 15-mile-per hour descending hairpin turns and very short lengths of straightaway. We were descending a very narrow valley, all in a fog and with waterfalls all around us (on the walls of the valley). The waterfalls were coming down multiple cascades of hundreds of feet on the high walls. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Once we reached Milford Sound we were surprised to see how small it is for the number of bus-fulls of people coming through. It turns out there’s an easy answer... all the buses bypass the ‘town’ and go to a the terminal for the tourist boats. And the ‘town’ in this case consists of a cafe and bar (The Blue Duck), a few hotel rooms, a backpacker’s lodge, and kayaking and helicopter-tour businesses. There is a gas station but it’s an unattended credit-card-only setup which doesn’t tell you the cost of a liter of fuel. Interesting choices all but once you see the small amount of available space, you see there was little choice. There’s only a small amount of room for parking cars and campervans so the bus-them-in solution is much more efficient and the boats are large enough to serve all their customer’s needs.
The big attraction, however, is the view. And today it was shrouded in fog from about 400 feet above ground level. And it was raining. But then again, this IS a rainforest! Milford Sound gets over seven meters of rain a year (New York city gets a little over a meter of rain a year).
We had a leisurely lunch at the Blue Duck, hoping the fog would lift in the early afternoon. But it was not to be. The fog had only gotten thicker so we decided to head back the 120K to Te Anau.
Our trip back to the tunnel was a rainy one but once through the tunnel we started seeing signs of clearing and by the time we reached Te Anau we had full sun.
In Te Anau we took a break to take a shower at the town park. This is a modern, very nice facility along the lake and it has a wonderful 8-minute, $5 shower which we shared.
We also gassed up and I took a close look at the van to try to determine why we are getting so many mosquitos when we camp in the remote areas. I had bought some dum-dum (a type of putty) and used it to block up the passageways the hoses use to get down to the under-carriage grey-water and fresh-water tanks. But when I closed the right-side slider door I saw a big problem.... the vents! The vents were merely pressed steel louvers with no screen backing. These are a direct path into the van. No wonder we had mosquitos! There are four vents, each 4 x 6 inches letting them in! I’ll have to do something about that.
It was getting late so we drove south to the nearest free campground at Lake Monowai in the Fiordlands National Park, arriving at 1830.
I took a few pictures of the lake and spent a few minutes on blog notes after supper before we called it a night at dark, which is at 2100 here.
-------------------------------
Tuesday, 5 March -
Today the main thing on the agenda was to get Labashi’s foot looked after. She had aggravated a callus between two of her outer toes. Her appointment wasn’t until late morning so we first drove in to Queenstown for coffee and a short walk to while away an hour.
The appointment with the podiatrist couldn’t have gone better. He shaved away the dead skin built up around the callus and explained the underlying cause (a bone spur) and the red dot at the center of the callus (blood between the dermis and epidermis). He applied a dressing and we were on our way with instant relief for Labashi.
After the treatment we had lunch in Budley and then headed south along Lake Wakatipu toward Te Anau.
We drove through dry, sheep-herding country for a bit over two hours to reach Te Anau, the gateway to the Fiordlands.
After a quick visit to the visitor center to get our bearings, we drove south for 10K to Rainbow Reach car-park, an end-point for the Kepler Track. Based on a recommendation from our ‘New Zealand Frenzy’ guidebook we walked for two hours on the Shallow Bay spur. The guidebook is correct--- superb walking here.
By then we were well after supper time so hopped in Budley and headed north to a DOC campsite at Henry Creek. We arrived after 1800 and settled in for supper, then a bit of work on the laptops.
-------------------------------
Monday, 4 March -
This morning we drove back the gorgeous Glenorchy-Queenstown Road along Lake Wakatipu. We tarried in Queenstown only long enough for me to run in to Joe’s Garage for a mid-morning mochaccino-for-takeaway.
We then drove north out of QTown to Frankton and turned east along hiqhway 8. This route took us along the ultra-blue Kawarau River and through the Valley of Wineries which is the Gibbston Valley and on through the Kawarau Gorge to Cromwell.
At Cromwell, we went through our regular provisioning and servicing process, then stopped at the Mitre10 (a Home Depot-like DIY store) hoping against hope of finding a small battery-operated fan. Somehow the gods of mercantilism were with us and we not only found a perfect little fan, it also was in the discount bin. When we saw the normally-$20 fan was only $5, it was an easy decision to give it a try.
We need a small fan occasionally because good ol’ Budley has lots of opening windows but only two of them are screened. If we happen to stop for a night in one of the buggier areas (like the West Coast), a fan will keep enough air moving through until the van cools down enough to be comfortable with just the airflow through the two windows.
We then went looking for the local library and a wi-fi connection. The town of Cromwell is very interesting in that it chose to build much of its downtown around a central walking mall. The storefronts, local government offices, and library all face in to the brick-paved town square and inter-connected walkways, while parking lies outside around the perimeter of the four-or-five block area. Larger businesses, like the Mitre10, gas stations, and the trades shops are individual buildings arrayed around the outside more like a traditional town.
The only problem this presented for us, is we couldn’t find the library! The signs identifying it as a library all face into the walking mall. We eventually saw what looked like a drive-up book-drop and that led us to the library.
After an hour on the ‘net, we drove south along Lake Dunstan to the town of Alexander, just for the drive. We figure we won’t be coming back this way so thought we take a quick drive-through of the area. These towns are now well into the rural lifestyle but their history was a gold-mining one. We saw more tailings piles here, largely because it’s more of a desert and the tailings piles don’t get covered up by ferns and mosses like they do on the west coast.
After a good look around we headed back through the Gibbston Valley toward Lake Hayes and our favorite freebie campground there. On a whim we stopped at one of the wineries with a ‘cheesery’ and sampled five or six very nice cheeses. We ended up buying a three-year-old cheddar and a creamy blue-veined cheese as well as a small baguette.
Back at Lake Hayes we broke out a bottle of wine--- a ‘shiraz rose’--- and had a nice little baguette, cheeses, and olives supper.
After supper I walked the cliffside track along Lake Hayes for two miles out and returned, all at a fast-walk pace in a blustery wind that had come up this evening.
**************** END OF POST ****************
(posted from Postmaster Cafe, Riverton, NZ)
(This post covers 4 - 6 March, 2013)
-----------------------------
Wednesday, 6 March -
Last night we had problems with mosquitos. We slept well for a couple of hours but one buzzed by my ear and I got up to check. I whacked seven of them arrayed around the ceiling. This isn’t good. We thought we had identified why we were getting some mosquitos but obviously not--- we shouldn’t have this many inside just from opening and closing the doors and windows through the day.
We both went on a mosquito-seeking mission and I’d say we knocked off two dozen or so. We tried sleeping again but it didn’t work. We were up several more times from 0300-0600, each time frustrated with the situation we obviously weren’t controlling.
We arose groggily around 0730 and got on with the day. We drove further north toward Milford Sound and knew right away we were in for a cloudy and wet day. We did get a few photos of a rainbow before we lost the sun entirely around 1000.
The Te Anau valley just keeps getting better and better the further north you go. The turns in the road get tighter and tighter and start rising toward the pass. The mountains around us were impossibly high.... more than 70 degrees up to the tops.
We eventually came to the Homer Tunnel which was the scariest tunnel we’ve ever been through. Our headlights barely lit the road in front of us and the overhead lights were so weak they may as well not have been there at all. The walls were very rough-hewn rock and the road only partially paved with trenches running alongside. The speed limit is 30 Kph or about 18 miles per hour and even that seems too fast. Oh, yeah.... and the tunnel road runs fairly steeply downhill (if you’re headed for the Sound). It’s safe enough, just spooky compared to other tunnels.
When we came out of the long, long tunnel, the road went into a series of 15-mile-per hour descending hairpin turns and very short lengths of straightaway. We were descending a very narrow valley, all in a fog and with waterfalls all around us (on the walls of the valley). The waterfalls were coming down multiple cascades of hundreds of feet on the high walls. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Once we reached Milford Sound we were surprised to see how small it is for the number of bus-fulls of people coming through. It turns out there’s an easy answer... all the buses bypass the ‘town’ and go to a the terminal for the tourist boats. And the ‘town’ in this case consists of a cafe and bar (The Blue Duck), a few hotel rooms, a backpacker’s lodge, and kayaking and helicopter-tour businesses. There is a gas station but it’s an unattended credit-card-only setup which doesn’t tell you the cost of a liter of fuel. Interesting choices all but once you see the small amount of available space, you see there was little choice. There’s only a small amount of room for parking cars and campervans so the bus-them-in solution is much more efficient and the boats are large enough to serve all their customer’s needs.
The big attraction, however, is the view. And today it was shrouded in fog from about 400 feet above ground level. And it was raining. But then again, this IS a rainforest! Milford Sound gets over seven meters of rain a year (New York city gets a little over a meter of rain a year).
We had a leisurely lunch at the Blue Duck, hoping the fog would lift in the early afternoon. But it was not to be. The fog had only gotten thicker so we decided to head back the 120K to Te Anau.
Our trip back to the tunnel was a rainy one but once through the tunnel we started seeing signs of clearing and by the time we reached Te Anau we had full sun.
In Te Anau we took a break to take a shower at the town park. This is a modern, very nice facility along the lake and it has a wonderful 8-minute, $5 shower which we shared.
We also gassed up and I took a close look at the van to try to determine why we are getting so many mosquitos when we camp in the remote areas. I had bought some dum-dum (a type of putty) and used it to block up the passageways the hoses use to get down to the under-carriage grey-water and fresh-water tanks. But when I closed the right-side slider door I saw a big problem.... the vents! The vents were merely pressed steel louvers with no screen backing. These are a direct path into the van. No wonder we had mosquitos! There are four vents, each 4 x 6 inches letting them in! I’ll have to do something about that.
It was getting late so we drove south to the nearest free campground at Lake Monowai in the Fiordlands National Park, arriving at 1830.
I took a few pictures of the lake and spent a few minutes on blog notes after supper before we called it a night at dark, which is at 2100 here.
-------------------------------
Tuesday, 5 March -
Today the main thing on the agenda was to get Labashi’s foot looked after. She had aggravated a callus between two of her outer toes. Her appointment wasn’t until late morning so we first drove in to Queenstown for coffee and a short walk to while away an hour.
The appointment with the podiatrist couldn’t have gone better. He shaved away the dead skin built up around the callus and explained the underlying cause (a bone spur) and the red dot at the center of the callus (blood between the dermis and epidermis). He applied a dressing and we were on our way with instant relief for Labashi.
After the treatment we had lunch in Budley and then headed south along Lake Wakatipu toward Te Anau.
We drove through dry, sheep-herding country for a bit over two hours to reach Te Anau, the gateway to the Fiordlands.
After a quick visit to the visitor center to get our bearings, we drove south for 10K to Rainbow Reach car-park, an end-point for the Kepler Track. Based on a recommendation from our ‘New Zealand Frenzy’ guidebook we walked for two hours on the Shallow Bay spur. The guidebook is correct--- superb walking here.
By then we were well after supper time so hopped in Budley and headed north to a DOC campsite at Henry Creek. We arrived after 1800 and settled in for supper, then a bit of work on the laptops.
-------------------------------
Monday, 4 March -
This morning we drove back the gorgeous Glenorchy-Queenstown Road along Lake Wakatipu. We tarried in Queenstown only long enough for me to run in to Joe’s Garage for a mid-morning mochaccino-for-takeaway.
We then drove north out of QTown to Frankton and turned east along hiqhway 8. This route took us along the ultra-blue Kawarau River and through the Valley of Wineries which is the Gibbston Valley and on through the Kawarau Gorge to Cromwell.
At Cromwell, we went through our regular provisioning and servicing process, then stopped at the Mitre10 (a Home Depot-like DIY store) hoping against hope of finding a small battery-operated fan. Somehow the gods of mercantilism were with us and we not only found a perfect little fan, it also was in the discount bin. When we saw the normally-$20 fan was only $5, it was an easy decision to give it a try.
We need a small fan occasionally because good ol’ Budley has lots of opening windows but only two of them are screened. If we happen to stop for a night in one of the buggier areas (like the West Coast), a fan will keep enough air moving through until the van cools down enough to be comfortable with just the airflow through the two windows.
We then went looking for the local library and a wi-fi connection. The town of Cromwell is very interesting in that it chose to build much of its downtown around a central walking mall. The storefronts, local government offices, and library all face in to the brick-paved town square and inter-connected walkways, while parking lies outside around the perimeter of the four-or-five block area. Larger businesses, like the Mitre10, gas stations, and the trades shops are individual buildings arrayed around the outside more like a traditional town.
The only problem this presented for us, is we couldn’t find the library! The signs identifying it as a library all face into the walking mall. We eventually saw what looked like a drive-up book-drop and that led us to the library.
After an hour on the ‘net, we drove south along Lake Dunstan to the town of Alexander, just for the drive. We figure we won’t be coming back this way so thought we take a quick drive-through of the area. These towns are now well into the rural lifestyle but their history was a gold-mining one. We saw more tailings piles here, largely because it’s more of a desert and the tailings piles don’t get covered up by ferns and mosses like they do on the west coast.
After a good look around we headed back through the Gibbston Valley toward Lake Hayes and our favorite freebie campground there. On a whim we stopped at one of the wineries with a ‘cheesery’ and sampled five or six very nice cheeses. We ended up buying a three-year-old cheddar and a creamy blue-veined cheese as well as a small baguette.
Back at Lake Hayes we broke out a bottle of wine--- a ‘shiraz rose’--- and had a nice little baguette, cheeses, and olives supper.
After supper I walked the cliffside track along Lake Hayes for two miles out and returned, all at a fast-walk pace in a blustery wind that had come up this evening.
**************** END OF POST ****************
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 21:28
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