Tag Archives: Tourism

An Aspiring Day

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Sunday 15 March 2026 – You can do all sorts of things from Wānaka – boat tours on the lake, rafting, helicopter flights, waterfall cable climbs, sky diving, paragliding. It seems such a nice town, yet everything seems to be geared towards getting you out of it. Anyway, another option is to find a trail and go walking. So, with a day on our hands, that’s what we decided to do. Obviously.

Caroline looked us over and said that we looked like the hiking types (appearances can be so deceptive), so why didn’t we try the Rob Roy Glacier trail? We took a look at it: 472m gain in 5km, according to AllTrails, is a little on the daunting side, but we decided we’d give it a go. It’s not local to Wānaka; it’s a 50km drive into the Mount Aspiring National Park, and some 30km of that is along a dirt road.

As we left Wānaka, the extent and scope of the A&P show was somewhat borne in on us, even though they were breaking down and clearing up.

Soon we could see the snow-capped mountains in the distance

and eventually hit the dirt road.

The scenery, as you’d expect from heading into the mountains, was dramatic

and so were the driving conditions, occasionally.

The sheep were loose, but there were also herds of deer behind fences, presumably being farmed. We got to the car park to find, to our total lack of surprise, that on a sunny Sunday, lots of other people had had the same idea as us.

We managed to find a space that didn’t seem too obstructive (later, we found that people had strewn cars all along the road, so we needn’t have worried about being tidy after all). A quick visit to the loo there and off we went,

past a rather handsome sculpture of a raptor of some description.

(It’s got a rather Simpsons-narrow-eyed expression, don’t you think?). The path starts off not completely level but at least “Inca flat” – ending at the same altitude it started – beside the Matukituki river

before one crosses the suspension bridge and the path starts to climb.

It’s largely through forest, which means that the bloody trees get in the way of the view

but occasionally they clear to give one a decent view.

Most of the trail is fine, if a little rocky, but there are some interesting moments as you climb.

and then you get to some steps – 126 of them in total.

These are relatively recent additions, to bypass damage that had rendered the trail impassable, so I suppose I’ll let them off. Shortly after the steps, you reach the Lower Lookout, where there are benches and an opportunity to rest and get some idea of what awaits those who carry on to the Upper Lookout.

From the signs and the AllTrails track profile, I was expecting this last kilometre to be rather tougher than what we’d already climbed, but basically it wasn’t. There were a couple of spots where the track became what Ian Burley would describe as “technical” and which I would call “bloody tricky and a bit nerve-racking”.

but we negotiated them without injury and carried on, past a couple of decent views

to

the end of the trail – unofficial  caption: “Thank Christ for that!”. Apart from the sheer satisfaction of having grunted one’s way up there, it’s a great place to get to. For a start, you can sit down and have your lunch,

and read the various info boards about the history of the place, which completely fail to answer the one obvious question that must occur to everyone as they heave themselves up the trail: why the actual is it called the “Rob Roy Glacier Trail”? What has a Scottish outlaw from the 17th Century got to do with an ice field in New Zealand? The glacier is named after the mountain, Rob Roy Peak; the naming of the mountain is usually attributed to one Charlie Douglas, a late 19th-century explorer with strong Scottish connections. There seem to be many Scottish aspects to this region of New Zealand, and this is a classic example.

Anyway….the view is fantastic.

It’s of course very difficult to do justice to photographically; I also tried a bit of video from this lookout and a point slightly below it.

I hope you get the idea.

Having lunched, of course, we had to face the inevitability of getting back down again; down can be so much harder than up.  Actually, it was OK, with a couple of decent views as we went,

but we were glad to see the suspension bridge and the car park again.

Unsurprisingly, there were far fewer vehicles there when we got back to our car.

According to my Garmin, the trail was 11km, and I expended 1300 calories in 16,000 steps. This makes it half a Tongariro, without the utter fucking brutality of That Descent, so we felt pretty good having completed today’s hike in just four and a half hours..

The journey back to our accommodation was as scenic as the journey out,

and we spent the rest of the evening resting.

This was our only full day in Wānaka – the morrow would see us moving on to parts new and even further south on our journey to the bottom of the South Island, via a couple of potentially interesting places – stay tuned to find out which.

 

 

 

 

Making Haast (Slowly) to Wānaka

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Saturday 14 March 2026 – The morning dawned at Lake Moeraki with bright sunshine, and mist on the lake.

We had to leave the Lodge, but there were birds fossicking about outside our bedroom, and so I had another go at photographing them. There were a couple of Tomtits,

and I finally managed to get a photo of a Fantail fanning its tail!

It’s about 170km from Lake Moeraki to Wānaka, which was our next stop. According to Google Maps, it should take two and a half hours. It took us seven. Admittedly, one of those hours was due to my forgetting to hand in our room key before we left the Wilderness Lodge. I only discovered this at our first stop, providentially just 30 minutes down the road, so we hightailed it back to the Lodge and I slunk in and left the key on an unattended reception desk. Hopefully, no-one will have noticed.

Our first stop, though, was rather charming. Virtually the entire journey to Wānaka is through bits of the country which have the Haast label, so Julius (or Johannes, depending on your choice of AI) von Haast was obviously a chap of considerable pith and moment as far as New Zealand is concerned. There’s a Township, a River, a Mountain, a Pass (which leads to Wānaka) and, oh yes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With a visitor centre. To get to Haast, we had to cross the longest single-lane bridge in New Zealand

which is so long it has two passing places along it.

It’s rare to find a visitor centre described as “outstanding”, but this one is, and it’s a description that’s hard to fault. For the centre attendant upon such a small town, it’s huge,

and has a lot of information inside.

The information covers the environment, the ecology, the geology, the history and the wildlife – and it has a lot of each of those.  One animal we’d hoped we might be able to see in the flesh but couldn’t is the Fjordland Penguin, or Tawaki.  The reason we couldn’t see it is twofold: it’s endangered, and therefore somewhat rare; and its breeding season is December so it has wisely buggered off in search of a life at sea. But the visitor centre had an example in a display case

which shows it’s a crested penguin, similar to the Macaroni and Rockhopper penguins we saw on our Antarctic trip, in South Georgia and the Falklands. (Coo! Three plugs in one sentence! Nice one, me!) There’s also some decent scenery outside to be taken in.

After returning the key to the Lodge, we took coffee at the Spiker cafe again before pressing on towards Wānaka. The Lodge had thoughtfully provided driving information, which gave us the very strong impression that there was a lot to see on the route, and Jane’s researches had confirmed this. As well as the formal Things To Gawp At, there were times we could stop and marvel at the landscape surrounding the River Haast

including its confluence with the River Landsborough.

There were three waterfalls to be Gawped at: Roaring Billy

Thunder Creek;

and Fantail.

We had hoped to be able to see the Gates Of Haast, which is an impressive gorge with a road bridge over it; but the road was subject to roadworks and we would have been pretty unpopular had we stopped, so we had perforce to skip that. The final Gawpee was the Haast Pass Lookout, which, we discovered, was up quite a climb. The track to it is through rainforest

and is occasionally steep and clambery.

But were we put off? No! (Well, not since we were half way up by this point, anyway.)

The view at the top is worth the climb, particularly once you combine that with the smug sense of achievement attained through clambering 100m vertical up an average 1-in-7 slope.

Just as we left the lookout platform at the top, three young girls came charging up with some kind of music playing boom box, obviously intent on a bit of a shindig, so we had a narrow escape there.

After the lookout, the road drops down towards Wānaka, skirting two lakes, Wānaka

and Hāwea.

It’s clearly very photogenic, but what also struck us was the complete change in landscape, from green rainforest to tawny grassland. It’s a very sudden and marked change

and this is the landscape surrounding Wānaka. Stopping to gawp at the scenery was the main reason that a two-and-a-half hour drive took us seven hours to complete, and we’re glad that we made a day of the journey. We arrived at our accommodation, the Criffel Peak View B&B, and were made heartily welcome by the very animated host, Caroline, who provided us with tea and gave a running commentary about the state of the town, which, she said, would be utterly heaving, because of the A&P (Agricultural and Pastoral) Show, now probably the biggest show of its kind in the country. Fortunately, we’d taken a bite to eat en route, at the Blue Pools cafe in Makarora, so didn’t need to find a place at a restaurant. But we fancied a glass of something cold and a peek at the town, so we pottered in as the sun set

and found the bit by the lake where all the bars are.

Indeed, it was, erm, vibrant.

but we managed to find somewhere to sit and order a drink, and absorbed the vibe as the light faded.

We headed back to our accommodation and did the sort of thing that occurs to one after a glass or two: we looked at the stars. Well, it was a clear night, and we’re in a different hemisphere from normal, so it’s an obvious thing to do, right?

Photographically, it was always going to be a bit challenging, what with no tripod and that. but we took a few pictures with Night Mode on the phone

Southern Cross visible towards the bottom
Might this be the Milky Way?

and a couple with the Nikon, handheld,

Southern Cross towards the bottom
Maybe the Milky Way?

and the results were not entirely unusable.

That was it for the day, then. We had no formal activity planned for the morrow, but Caroline had planted an idea about what we could do with a day on our hands. So that’s what we’ll probably do and you’ll have to come back to find out what that was.

 

 

 

More Moeraki

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Thursday 12 March 2026 – We didn’t fancy kayaking or paying to join the organised hike from the Lodge, but we had time on our hands, and felt we should go for a walk. Obviously. Showers were (accurately) forecast for the morning, but later on in the day we embarked on a walk to Monro Beach, some 3km to the north of the Lodge and reached along a public path. This is a rainforest walk, through some more rainforesty rainforest. The path starts out quite wide,

crosses a suspension bridge

View from the suspension bridge

and then becomes rather narrower as it wends its way through the forest.

There are some impressively tall trees

but apart from that, it’s just this rainforest path, you know?

It’s pleasant to be out and walking in all that greenery, but frankly, once you’ve seen one rainforest, unless you’re rather better versed than I am in the lore of the rainforest, you’ve seen ’em all, so there was little to remark upon. We reached the beach

and Jane started scouting around to try to find some greenstone. It’s a stony beach so there’s plenty of scope for fossicking. I’m not hugely into that, so I took some photos of the environs. There are some moderately dramatic rocks out to sea

and a colourful jumble of them on land

and it seems that the beach is not unpopular as a walking destination;

possibly because the weather had cheered up since the morning there were a few couples walking the path at the same time as us.

We got back to the Lodge with time for a Nice Cup Of (Twinings finest Earl Grey) Tea before going out on the Lodge’s daily 5pm pre-drinkies walk. This time we were guided by Kirsten, who took us along a path to the lake, via a few notable plants and trees. Fringing the Lodge’s grounds are some very old trees

and Kirsten showed us a few more as we walked the short distance to the lake shore.

As before, fantails and tomtits accompanied us at times, seeking the insects we disturbed. I only had the little Sony camera with me, but managed to capture this shot of a tomtit.

I’m not sure whether the bird is feeling sad or is simply fed up that we haven’t disturbed more insects for it.

Kirsten showed us a couple of locations that could possibly come into their own after dark: one was a Lemonwood tree, which is a favoured perching spot of Morepork owls; and the other was the bole of a fallen tree which is known to harbour glow worms. So, after (another very fine) dinner, we pottered out with torches to see what we could see. Not, sadly, owls; but we found our way back to the glow worm tree and

there they were! Since we were not pressed for time, we experimented a bit with photography of this tricky subject. The photo above was simply captured using Night Mode on a Samsung phone, but I had the Nikon with me and had a go with that, too.

Not a huge difference, to be honest. We tried with a little bit of light

which give a slightly better idea, although the light does overwhelm the glow from the worms; and one with a little less light,

where, if you use your imagination, you might be able to see a little bit of the tree (lower left) as well as the glows. Finally, before we left the poor things in peace, we used the torch to illuminate one;

you can see the sticky threads it has exuded to trap insects attracted by its glow.

That was it for the day, so we retired to sleep the sleep of the just been out for a walk, wondering how much of the following day would be usable for touristing, because the weather forecast was pretty dire.

Friday 13 March 2026 – Forecast:

Reality:

We were, then, reasonably confident that the morning was a write off. However, it was (a) nice to bunk off and take things easy from relentless touristing and (b) a good opportunity to catch up with the laundry, as These Things Are Important, You Know.

However, the forecast was for the day to improve and the rain duly stopped, so, having exhausted all the hikes near the Lodge, we didn’t go for a walk. Obviously. We took up on a slightly left-field recommendation from Donovan, one of the serving staff at the Lodge, and headed out towards Jackson Bay. There’s nothing there apart from a famous fish and chip shop and it would be too late for lunch by the time we got there and anyway we’re eating too much as it is; but we thought it might make a nice excursion – it’s about 65km south of the Lodge.

The route takes one near the small township of Haast which features a petrol station and a coffee shop called the Striker Cafe.

This was only open until 2.30pm and we got there only just in time for a coffee. So we also treated ourselves to cake, which was lovely but which we might, of course, come to regret: “sin in Haast, repent at leisure”. Then we carried on along the coast road to Jackson Bay, which led past some pretty varied scenery.

One stretch of arrow-straight road led through rainforest, which felt distinctly weird.

One thing Jane had spotted en route was a Pioneers Cemetery, so we stopped off to take a look.

Several graves were dotted throughout the woodland, some with headstones, many without.

It was a sight to cause mixed emotions: sadness because it seems a rather lonely and neglected site; but a certain warmth that the contribution of the pioneers to the generation of the area is recognised via a heritage location.

So: Jackson Bay, then. Indeed a small place. It has a wharf, from which Jane hoped to see perhaps penguins or maybe dolphins but didn’t.

The wharf is perhaps not being best maintained.

it has a handful of buildings,

chief among which is The Craypot, the fish’n’chips place recommended by Donovan.

It may not look much, but it seems like it’s a destination restaurant; lots of locals we talked to knew about it. Outside the Craypot is a rather fetching installation featuring many, many abalone shells (the locals call them pāua).

Jane had a quick chat with the owner, who said that he and his family had eaten all of the shells’ inhabitants over the years, having fished for them where they used to live further south. Abalone fishing is currently forbidden in Jackson Bay in order for the population to regenerate; the sustainability of fishing generally is taken quite seriously,

but I take issue with some of their guidelines.

I can’t even run at 9kph for any distance at all, far less walk at that speed.

The road from Haast to Jackson Bay features a few speed restrictions for roadworks, and it’s clear that rockfalls have been a problem.

Also, some of the scenery is markedly different from the rainforest flora we’d seen thus far in these parts.

On the way back to the Lodge, we made a couple of stops in the hope that there was some more scenery to take in. The first was also so that I could indulge in schoolboy giggles.

Actually, this site was a pleasant stop, apart from sandflies, which were occasionally a bit of a nuisance. There’s a lake there, Dune Lake, which we could have walked around had not evening drinks back at the Lodge been making their siren call, but we walked a little of it

to a viewpoint, which has a great outlook on more of that unfamiliar vegetation we’d seen earlier.

There’s also a small marine reserve, Tauparikaka Marine reserve, which is an attractive setting.

The other stopping place was Knight’s Point Lookout, which offers, I suppose, a decent enough view

but has a surprisingly large car park for what it offers, with multiple bus parking and camper van slots. I guess the presence of public toilets might have something to do with it, because it’s otherwise just this decent view.

Back at the Lodge, we had our final, again very fine, dinner as the sun (which by now had made an appearance) set over the excellent view from the dining room.

These will be our final images from the Wilderness Lodge at Lake Moeraki. Tomorrow, we move on, again further south, and the pace of events picks up somewhat – no more three-night stays as we make our way down to and round the south coast. We have just over a week left in this lovely country and, we hope, lots more to see and enjoy, so stay with us for the rest of the trip, won’t you?