South Island Road Trip

I’m playing catch up now with my blog posts, but I finally can because I am done with all my finals! Now let’s rewind to the third week of the mid-semester break…

After Fiona and I got back from Abel Tasman, we had a day to reset and to buy food for our next road trip. Before the break began, we had bought our car together off of Facebook Marketplace and had it tuned up so it was fit to drive. We also put together a group for our roadtrip consisting of Fiona and I, Kate, and two other friends named Lydia and Jeanne.

Our strategy was to drive around 8 hours on the first day, and then to work our way back up to Christchurch in shorter segments during the rest of the trip. We drove through Dunedin to Te Anau, which is a cute little town on a lake. We stayed about 20 minutes from there in a hostel called Possum Lodge, which was on Lake Manapouri. We had a beautiful sunset there that first night over the lake.

The next day, we drove to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is one of the “must-see” places of New Zealand, and it was indeed beautiful. A sign there said that one of the Māori gods made all the Fiordland sounds with his digging stick, but saved the best – Piopiotahi aka Milford Sound – for last. Then Hine-nui-o-te-Pō, the goddess of the night, made sandflies and put them there so mortals wouldn’t get stuck there, transfixed by the beauty. The best way to see Milford Sound – which is technically a fiord – is to do a boat tour, which we did. The road there is known for its steepness and curviness, and our poor little car struggled its way up, making weird noises the whole way. We were a bit concerned, but made it there.

Included in the tour was a visit to the underwater observatory, which is a floating building with an observation chamber that goes down 10 meters and has thick glass windows so you can see all the fish. There were all sorts of cool animals gathered around the observatory, and it was so fun to watch the fish eat and chase each other around.

On our way back, I drove carefully and decided not to go any faster than the car comfortably could, which meant that I was going 20 kilometers an hour at times. We safely made it back, and ultimately, that’s all I could ask for – our car may be a little slow but it gets us places.

The next day, we went to the Glowworm caves on Lake Te Anau. Glowworms are very cool animals that hang on the cave walls in little hammocks they make. They put out “fishing lines” with little blobs of liquid on them, and they glow to attract other insects, which then get caught in their fishing lines. In a dark cave, they look like greenish stars. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to photograph them, but you can look up professional pictures online that are better than anything I could take anyway.

That afternoon, we ate pies for lunch in Te Anau, explored the town a bit, and then drove to Moke Lake Campsite near Queenstown just in time for another beautiful sunset.

The next morning, it was raining a bit when we drove to Queenstown. We decided to hike up the steep hill near the town, and saw many mushrooms on the way up. There is a gondola that goes up and down that hill, and I had heard that at the top, no one checks if you have a ticket or not for the way down. Sure enough, we were able to confidently walk onto the gondola and enjoy the 5 minute ride down what it had just taken us over an hour to walk up.

Afterwards, we split up and explored the Queenstown shops for a little while before meeting back at the car to go to our afternoon hike. Most everything in the shops is touristy and ridiculously overpriced, but there were some funny (also overpriced) items…

That afternoon, we went for a hike in Arrowtown, which is a 20 minute drive from Queenstown. We were really lucky because the leaves of all the trees were in brilliant fall colors, and the whole valley we hiked in was overflowing with golds and reds.

The next morning, we dropped Kate off at the bus station – she was heading back to go on a university field trip – and then drove to the Rob Roy Glacier Track near Wānaka. We had to cross 14 streams each way in our car to and from the trailhead – our little car did fine! We also had to slow for cows. The hike to the glacier was beautiful, and the glacier itself was pretty impressive.

That evening, we stayed in a comfy hostel in Wānaka. The next morning, we hiked up to see Wānaka from up the hill, and then walked down to the famous Wānaka tree. Later, we stopped at a famous patisserie and ate overpriced but delicious pastries. The food on this road trip amused me because most of the time, we were having simple meals of pasta and tomato sauce with cheese, but interspersed were some delicious morsels of the highest quality food you can imagine.

Later, we drove to the Wānaka Lavender farm, which is half farm and half tourist attraction. It was quite nice, and I collected some sprigs of lavender to hang in the car and keep it smelling nice.

After visiting the lavender farm, we drove to Lake Tekapo. It was pretty late, but we went on a little hike there and saw lots of mushrooms, some of which I picked and cooked up for dinner.

The next morning, it kindly waited to start raining until we packed up the tent, but after that began one of the steadiest rains I have seen in New Zealand since I’ve been here. We hiked the Hooker Valley track to see the glacier and Mount Cook at the end, but we ended up not seeing much except the rain. It was nevertheless a nice hike. Although we had planned to stay another night and drive back, we were wet and tired and decided just to drive straight back that night.

We saw so much on this road trip, by the end, I just couldn’t mentally process any more stunning landscapes. We saw so much in that one week, and overall got along with each other. Road tripping is a great way to get a small taste of many places, and I really feel like we made the most of our time with this one.