The Saunders Wander

On Day 6 we took an Air New Zealand flight down to Christchurch to begin the south island leg of the trip. It was interesting flying domestic in NZ especially because of the security checkpoint. Many people in line were surprised it was "taking so long", because their flight was leaving in 30 minutes and they were still in line. Also, it was much more like security used to be in the US - no restrictions on liquids, no having to take clothes off or laptops out, just a scan of yourself and your bags. The flight itself was pleasant, with some good mountain views, tea and pretzels (somehow this was the only place NZ had pretzels. They weren't in stores but they still served them on planes). Once we landed in Christchurch we got our next car, which, despite being an SUV, still couldn't fit both of our suitcases in the trunk, and checked out the city.   We had lunch at a pizza place in an area of town called Re:Start, which is a sort of walking mall a...

Day 8 was a big driving day for us, from Christchurch, over Arthur's Pass, to Hokitika. Luckily, it was another absolutely gorgeous day for a drive. The scenery was really spectacular over the pass as well. For the most part, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves in this post. This is approaching the mountains from the East. Much of the drive was similar scenery to this, just gorgeous skies and cool mountains, with varying degrees of snow. However, we did stop at some really neat places. First off, we stopped for a while at Castle Hill, which has a number of large limestone rock formations reminiscent of castle walls and turrets. There were quite a few people there, taking advantage of the good weather to rock climb, picnic, and relax around the rocks. We hiked up to the top of the hill, about 15 minutes or so, and explored the neat rocks at the top, as well as a really great view of the valley and farms below. Below is a truly quintessential New Zealan...

Day 9 began with another challenging drive. This time, south to the town of Franz Josef for our midday helicopter hike on the Franz Joself glacier. After checking into our hotel and meeting a friendly three-legged cat belonging to the owner, we walked across the street to the tour company. As we had expected, our tour was cancelled due to the weather on the mountain. It was disappointing to have that cancelation after building up the courage to tackle the helicopter ride, but dense fog and swirling wind don't make for safe helicopter flying (well, landing, really). After getting that news, we booked a guided valley hike for the afternoon instead and found some good Asian food for lunch to lift our spirits. Much of the valley hike was on land that was previously occupied by the glacier; it has recessed quite a bit over the past 150 years or so. There is a river that originates from the glacier and winds its way down the valley. The color of the river, a milky blue-grey, is due t...

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...

Wanaka is really an interesting town. We didn't feel like doing any hiking because the hills were pretty open, and it was sunny and warm, so we checked out some of the other sights during our full day there. We had been recommended to a place called Puzzling World, and I'm really glad we ended up there as it was really quite unique. There were two main attractions there, a sort of interactive museum of optical illusions, and a life size wooden maze. We checked out the museum first. Below are some pictures from their life-size Ames room. Because of the slope of the room you can appear the same height as you are when standing next to each other in the middle, but when you are on either side,one of you appears tiny and the other enormous! Not pictured is the warning on the wall where the camera spot is that reminds you that the ceiling height is very low, so you shouldn't come past that yellow line. Even from inside the room the illusion can be seen, and it was pretty ne...

We had originally planned to spend half a day in Wanaka and then drive over to Dunedin, but since there wasn't really anything else we wanted to do in Wanaka, we left early and took the scenic route over to the east coast. Once again, there were some amazing overlooks, now seeing the Pacific ocean from the other side! We had stopped to get drinks and use the restroom in a small town north of Dunedin, and at the visitors center picked up a brochure of all the little scenic routes. On it was listed a neat-sounding feature called the organ pipes. These are bassalt rock structures with a hexagonal shape, that really were quite interesting, despite the New Zealand stupid-steep switchback hike to get to them. We weren't entirely prepared for it to be a hike, since the brochure didn't mention that you'd have to hike to the columns. Luckily, someone had scrawled on the sign that it was indeed an hour or so round trip, and somehow Charlie convinced me to go. It was wort...

Our last day in New Zealand was bittersweet. Part of us was ready to get back to normal life at home, and away from all the eating out at restaurants, but it was definitely sad to be saying goodbye to such a great trip. We started off leisurely with a beach walk after brunch. We didn't attempt to swim, as there were only surfers with wetsuits, but we did walk along the raised sidewalk and then along the sand for a bit. There were lots of people out picnicking and enjoying the sunshine. I assume that this was once some kind of pier, but I just loved the way the pillars reflected in the water. If you look close in this picture you can see a few of the surfers out trying to catch waves. Watching them from our room was really fun, and I was impressed at the skills some of them had. In the evening, we went to the Royal Albatross Center out on the Otago Peninsula. This wasn't something we had planned on doing, but saw a brochure and decided to check it out. Boy was i...