Arrowtown, Glenorchy, Wanaka, & West Coast

To reach the West Coast required doubling back to Queenstown. This time we opted to camp at historic Arrowtown which maintains a cute downtown. We then drove to Glenorchy to see the rest of the lake, and swung back and up to Wanaka. We opted for the back road through an alpine pass, including spectacular views.

View from the pass

Wanaka is apparently starting to boom the way Queenstown did. It certainly was alive, but notably not as boisterous as Queenstown. Unique there was Puzzling World, where we competed in a giant outdoor maze (4 flags and the exit), plus explored illusions (including a floor tilted at 15deg).

From Wanaka we continued to Haast and began our west coast adventure. We ended up crossing the Haast pass in driving rain and stopped in Haast for the night (a couple hours short of our goal of the glaciers).

Maze

Happy faces finishing

Roman Toilets... by the actual toilets (random)

Yesterday we did the hikes to Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, and saw a kiwi bird in person! (no photos as not allowed to take photos).

Fox Glacier

Franz Josef Glacier

Upcoming plan is to bike the west coast wilderness trail by Greymouth, then eventually bike the Great Tastes Trail by Nelson. We were going to take the train through Arthur's Pass to Christchurch, but apparently some of the tracks were burned in a fire and the train is out of commission until May.