Glaciers and Wanaka

New Zealand

April 2007

GLACIERS AND WANAKA

This night we stayed at a very nice campsite with superb facilities and beautiful scenery. Tucked in the shadows of the surrounding ice capped mountains, you had to wrap up warm here. We decided to treat ourselves and popped in to town for a well deserved Indian curry. This at least set a little fire burning in ones tummy to help warm the body through the night.

Up at the crack of dawn….. afraid not! We were usually the last to set off each day and probably the reason why we always arrived at the next site well after dark and cooking dinner at some ridiculous hour. We ARE on holiday don’t forget.

Now there’s not really much to tell you about the two glaciers in this region except that their names are the Franz Josef Glacier and the Fox Glacier. They are said to be unique in terms of how simple they are to get to, but after seeing the amazing Puerto Mourino in Argentina, these really didn’t compare. Like many, they are receding at an alarming rate. Whether or not global warming has anything to do with it is not for me to say, but if you look at one of our photos, it’s a diagram superimposed over a glacier. The white lines clearly show where the glacier stretched to over 100 years ago and suffice to say…it’s shrunk a great deal.

From here we navigated our way down and slightly inland to Wanaka…. Watch how you say that after a few beers! Wan-a-ka sits adjacent to the third biggest lake on the southern island and is a summer holiday town for Kiwis and travellers alike. Its not far from Queenstown and is sometimes seen as a place to just chill out after a few days of adrenaline sports in the sister town. My good friend Steve Selby had just returned from a month in Australia and said I must do a parachute jump and Queenstown is the place to do it. I’m not going to lie! I bottled it and think I’ll save it for when I have some willing friends to do it with me… Alone would be no fun!

As we left Wanaka, we stopped by the lake where there was an amazing outside photographic gallery on display. A guy called Yann Arthus-Bertrand has painstakingly taken the most beautiful aerial photos of the world from a helicopter. From above everything looks so much more weird and wonderful and you can buy his book or check out the site at http://www.yannarthusbertrand.com. Each photo has descriptions and described how the world is changing or being affected by climate change or mans actions. Very interesting.

After such serious and deep contemplation as to the state of our beloved planet we had to balance the day with a trip to puzzle world. We got lost in a very large and almost impossible maze, felt sickly drunk inside a sloping room, and got square eyes trying to fathom some very weird visual puzzles. The best was a room full of famous faces that had been moulded in to a cream plastic and they sunk away from you. But as you walked around the room you could clearly see all the faces follow you and some start to stick out rather than have a sunken look. It really had to be seen with your own eyes but we’ve added a photo to our gallery for you to try to get a feel. Puzzles ain’t just for kids!