Honeymoon Day 10 - West Coast Beach Drive
From Franz Josef, we drove down the west coast of the south island and east to Wanaka. The west coast of New Zealand is home to many secluded beaches. We were told by a friend to just turn down any old side street leading toward the coast and you're bound to find a beautiful beach. We didn't end up doing that, but we did find some great parks and overlooks, and yes, even a great beach.
This overlook was a gorgeous view, but unfortunately was also a little overrun by the one annoying creature in New Zealand - sand flies. Their bites stay itchy for days and days, and we both had a few on our arms and legs. But, we enjoyed the view for a bit and headed back to the car for some more scenic, winding drive.
The beach we ended up exploring was really beautiful, with cool driftwood and rocky shores that transitioned to light sand as you neared the water. One of the more interesting things I thought was that we saw basically no shells on the beach. Normally you expect to find a lot of "boring" shells, or at least pieces of them, but here we saw maybe a dozen shells total over the course of a 20 minute walk.
We also didn't see any animals or birds really on the beach itself, though that was less surprising. The water was a beautiful blue though, and it was really peaceful.
Above, is a picture of where a river is getting to the beach. There was a nice boardwalk along the sand dunes, which we wandered around, and another along the marshlands near this river. We opted out of the marshlands walk, though, because it was also in the sun and we hadn't applied sunscreen. We also still had a few hours of driving ahead of us, so off we went.
We ended up stopping to at least pull off the road and stretch about every 45 minutes to an hour, because this drive was probably the most fatiguing for me out of all of them. The roads were narrow and curvy, and there were a fair number of cars taking this route. The stops were all amazingly beautiful though. We were really taken by the color of the water in this mountain stream. Probably it was originally from another glacier.
Finally, we made it to the Wanaka area. Wanaka is another lakeside town, and really was beautiful. It reminded me a lot of eastern Washington, with its brown hills. I expect it's more green in spring, but as we were on the tail end of summer, it had dried out a bit.
Right when we were coming into town we were stopped for 15 minutes or so while a helicopter picked up water in a pouch from the lake and dumped it onto the hillside above the road. We didn't see any smoke or anything, and couldn't quite figure out why they were doing this, but the prevailing theory is that they were training for brush fire control. Either way, it was neat to see the helicopter doing its thing, and we were soon on our way to our next bed and breakfast.
We did make it to social hour at the B&B this time - not really our favorite thing, but we did get to try some of the host's wine, which was delicious, and some canapes that were quite tasty. We also found out that one of the couples staying at the B&B was from Apex, NC - about 30 minutes from where we live. Turns out they were retired IBMers, and had worked in the same building I work in now. What a small world!
This overlook was a gorgeous view, but unfortunately was also a little overrun by the one annoying creature in New Zealand - sand flies. Their bites stay itchy for days and days, and we both had a few on our arms and legs. But, we enjoyed the view for a bit and headed back to the car for some more scenic, winding drive.
The beach we ended up exploring was really beautiful, with cool driftwood and rocky shores that transitioned to light sand as you neared the water. One of the more interesting things I thought was that we saw basically no shells on the beach. Normally you expect to find a lot of "boring" shells, or at least pieces of them, but here we saw maybe a dozen shells total over the course of a 20 minute walk.
We also didn't see any animals or birds really on the beach itself, though that was less surprising. The water was a beautiful blue though, and it was really peaceful.
Above, is a picture of where a river is getting to the beach. There was a nice boardwalk along the sand dunes, which we wandered around, and another along the marshlands near this river. We opted out of the marshlands walk, though, because it was also in the sun and we hadn't applied sunscreen. We also still had a few hours of driving ahead of us, so off we went.
We ended up stopping to at least pull off the road and stretch about every 45 minutes to an hour, because this drive was probably the most fatiguing for me out of all of them. The roads were narrow and curvy, and there were a fair number of cars taking this route. The stops were all amazingly beautiful though. We were really taken by the color of the water in this mountain stream. Probably it was originally from another glacier.
Finally, we made it to the Wanaka area. Wanaka is another lakeside town, and really was beautiful. It reminded me a lot of eastern Washington, with its brown hills. I expect it's more green in spring, but as we were on the tail end of summer, it had dried out a bit.
Right when we were coming into town we were stopped for 15 minutes or so while a helicopter picked up water in a pouch from the lake and dumped it onto the hillside above the road. We didn't see any smoke or anything, and couldn't quite figure out why they were doing this, but the prevailing theory is that they were training for brush fire control. Either way, it was neat to see the helicopter doing its thing, and we were soon on our way to our next bed and breakfast.
We did make it to social hour at the B&B this time - not really our favorite thing, but we did get to try some of the host's wine, which was delicious, and some canapes that were quite tasty. We also found out that one of the couples staying at the B&B was from Apex, NC - about 30 minutes from where we live. Turns out they were retired IBMers, and had worked in the same building I work in now. What a small world!
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