Mountain Paradise
Day 5 – Queenstown to Te Anau
Still feeling some of the leftover effects of the beer from the previous night, we got up late at the Queenstown YHA and prepared to go to Te Anau. We were unsure exactly how our next few days would go, but kayaking or a cruise around Milford Sound was likely. As the jump-off point for trips into Milford, Te Anau was the ideal place for us to spend our next night. As we left Queenstown, the road grew curvy and was increasingly high. We were passing over the magnificent Southern Alps. All around us were mountains. We made a few stops, one of which included a small roadside diner and shop. We were both feeling unusually tired and got coffee there. I had an aching hunger inside me for ice cream so I bought a cone of ice cream as well. So what if it was 10 in the morning! After passing through the higher elevations, we descended down on the little town of Te Anau. Unlike Queenstown, it had a subtle tourist quality to it. There were certainly plenty of tourists around, and yet the town didn’t seem quite so rallied around the tourist cause as Queenstown was. We stopped and checked in to the YHA, but decided to continue on. Taking the advice of my kiwi flatmate, Julie, we aimed for Lake Marion. We drove down the scenic road that led into Fiordland and eventually to Milford. We stopped to take a few pictures. At one point we had our first encounter with a Kea, the cheeky mostly-ground-dwelling parrots. Ignoring the many signs I had seen not to feed the parrots, I gave the parrot a piece of apple in exchange for a photo op. The views were absolutely breathtaking. The narrow roads wound us through the upper parts of the peaks while looking down on what seemed to be a lush rain forest. In New Zealand they would have in fact called it a Beech Forest. We turned off on the Hollyford road, near where the Hollyford track began. From the car pack, we crossed the Hollyford River and began the trek towards Lake Marion. At first the hike was easy. Equipped with boardwalks and fine graveled paths, we had no trouble for the first fifteen minutes. We arrived at the rapids, where most people generally turned around and went back to their cars. Lake Marion, however, was another hour away. So we continued along the path as it grew wetter and quickly became a tangled mess of roots and rocks. We took a few short breaks for photographs, but more or less hiked the whole way through as about as constant of a pace as we could manage. Lake Marion was quite fantastic. When we finally arrived, we found only two other small groups there. The lake was an isolated body nestled at the end of the valley through which we had been traveling. All around there were waterfalls cascading down from the high, snow covered peaks. The lake, like much of the rivers in the area, was remarkably blue from the runoff of the snow and glaciers. After absorbing the lake’s beauty and having a bite to eat, we returned on the path from which we’d come. The hike back was, in my opinion, more grueling than the uphill hike to the lake. By the end, my knees were wobbling from the constant jolting of hopping down from rocks and roots. I was relieved to sit a while on the car ride back. Up until then I’d been making a point to try and stay awake in the car to keep Tory company, but at this point boredom and exhaustion took over and I dozed a little on the way back to Te Anau. After getting situated in the hostel, we went out looking for a place to eat. We find a nice coffee shop turned Italian restaurant at which we split a bottle of wine and ate a wholesome meal. For the following day we arranged for a guided kayak trip around Milford Sound. Aside from that we called it a relatively early night, since the kayak trip required us to wake up at the painfully early time of 5:40am.
Tags: Milford Sound, New Zealand, Queenstown, Te Anau, Travel
gregbilsland
Leave a Reply