A little cloudier first thing this morning but it was dry. We had a long drive ahead of with our final destination being Wanaka in the Southern Alps. The first (and only) planned stop today was at the Fox Glacier, this one was easier to get closer to than the Franz Josef one yesterday.
Fox Glacier
The rest of the day was going to be driving, driving, driving as we had about 220km to go to destination through mostly uninhabited areas , signs like no gas station for the next 109km reinforced this. In fact part of the road that we were taking was not built until 1965, and didn’t have a hard surface until 1995.
What we weren’t prepared for, yet again, was the stunning scenery. Unfortunately it is impossible for me to describe the scenery and do it justice. Those who have been here will know what I mean; those that haven’t been here should try to get here some time!
There were waterfalls all along the route, some in the distance others at the roads edge, some just trickles others over 100ft high
Waterfall
For a lot of the journey we followed the Haast River, in places it was a very milky in colour, in others it was a brilliant blue.
About half way along the route we saw a sign for The Blue Pools, so we pulled off and set off along the track for a 30 minute stroll to the pools. The good news was that it was downhill, the bad news was that we had to get back. Again, the path was well maintained and easy to follow, there were two bridges along the way, but nowhere near the length of the swing bridge we went on a few days ago. The journey was worth it.
The Blue Pool
Back on the road again, we saw a sign “Rock fall, expect delays”, but we saw nothing….. for 20kms, then we ran into a line of stationary traffic. This jam was huge by NZ standards; there must have been at least 8 vehicles in front of us.
Rock Slide
The crews had cleared one lane, but there was a lot of work to do on the other. We are a bit concerned about another rock fall. Currently Milford Sound has been cut off by a large rock fall, this is one of the major tourist areas for scenery. They hope to have it open by Wednesday; we plan to be there Friday. Let’s hope it gets opened up on time.
We now started to climb slowly as we got into the Southern Alps, the road we were on was the lowest of the trans-alpine routes, climbing only to around 1700 feet. Tomorrow we plan to take a higher route on our way to Queenstown.
View From the Passenger Seat