Good thing this is a photo blog because the photos are going to let you have it today. So much intense beauty to be seen in one five hour drive. Queenstown to the west coast is about a three hour drive, and then we turned north at the coast and drove up to Franz Josef Glacier which was our stopping point for the night. FJG is in the shadow of Mt. Cook, which is New Zealand’s highest peak at just over 12,000 feet.
I promise you that we could easily show you 100 pictures of what we saw today and it still might not be enough. So we’ve done our best and pared them down to these.
We started out our day driving north from Queenstown in the early morning autumn frost.
First to take our breath away was Lake Hawea. This lake covers about 54 square miles and is nearly 1,300 feet deep – it’s a big lake.
Every direction you turned you saw beauty.
And another.
Or this.
And finally Jeff! But look down into the lake – you can see how clear the water is. It was simply amazing.
From here we kept driving west towards the coast passing by Lake Wanaka in the Southern Alps.
It was definitely autumn up here – the temperature at this point was about 35 degrees.
And then this.
We even saw some waterfalls along the way. This one is called Fantail Falls and is in Mt. Aspiring National Park.
These probably have no name as they are so high up on the mountain I doubt anyone has gotten close to them.
Here’s Jeff trying to find just the right location for a picture of a roaring creek. He’s walking across one of the many one lane bridges we crossed today.
On the subject of one lane bridges, here is a video of us crossing one.
As we neared the coast the temperature rose to near 60 degrees and the foliage turned more tropical. We took a great walk through the forest to the Blue Pools which will be in a separate post. Here are a couple of pictures as we arrived at the coast.
And this.
We managed to see Bruce Bay before nightfall. This beach is one of New Zealand’s 10 favorites.
Overall an incredible drive today.
Tomorrow we drive back to Christchurch and then fly to Wellington on the north island!
