Road Side Attractions

Let me begin this blog with an apology. As I was speeding my way through the descriptions of where I've travelled, I didn't think about the fact that no one back home had any idea WHERE Mapua was, or Hokitika, or maybe even Christchurch. So, as per the request of my loving family, I have included a rough map that I put together outlining where we're up to at this point in my South Island journey. Some of the names might be hard to read - if so, just check out New Zealand using Google Maps. The bottom right corner is Christchurch, our starting point.

So ... continuing with the journey. In the morning, Mal, Kelsey, and Drea took a helicopter ride to see some of the glaciers. We ended up skipping out on our glacier hike for the afternoon since we'd been told by friends that the half day wasn't worth it - you didn't get up high enough to really enjoy the ice fields. I'm a little bit disappointed that I didn't see any glaciers, but I ended up saving a LOT of money by not going ... the tourism industry in New Zealand is catering more and more to wealthier / older bus tours of people and not to backpackers like us!

After the heli ride was finished we drove south to Fox Glacier (only about 30 minutes) where we had lunch. The rest of the afternoon was spent stopping at pretty much every single road side attraction that NZ had to offer us for the day. It's amazing how many cool things you can see in this country by stopping your car and walking 10 minutes away from the road! Check out what we saw between the glaciers and Wanaka:

#1

Battling bugs to check out the dolphins

We stopped at a beach near Haast, where there was a boardwalk peruse to a Dune Lake. I have no idea who would be crazy enough to do the walk, because the sand flies at this beach were ferocious. The only thing that kept us at the beach were the beautiful jumping sea creatures we saw - Hector's dolphins! This endangered species of dolphin is only found in New Zealand, and can be identified by their rounded dorsal fin. They were so cool - I'd never seen dolphins jump like that other than at the Vancouver Aquarium.

Not my photo ... but easily could have been if I'd had a telephoto lens!

#2
We crossed a bridge that was infested with tourists, so we decided to hop out and check out what all the fuss was about ... turns out it was just a really gorgeous river with stunningly blue water flowing down it.


#3
A sign read "Blue Pools - 10 min walk" so once again we hopped out of the car, did the walk and ended up somewhere beautiful. We waded into freezing cold water that lovingly soothed all of our itchy sandfly bites from earlier that afternoon.



Our last couple stops of the day were to take photos of the incredible mountains we began driving past as we neared Wanaka (our destination for the night). It was such a gorgeous day and everything we passed seemed to become more and more unbelievable!