Monday 12th February – The Fjordland to Wanaka

We had nothing booked for today and we were backtracking past Queenstown to Wanaka on the same roads that we had driven last week to reach Te Anau.

I started the day with a short pretty hike up to a waterfall next to our campground, then we hit the road back to Te Anau.  

Stopping off for fuel and some groceries, I took some more scenic photos as we progressed down the route but we were basically back-tracking along the same roads we had driven two days earlier, past Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu and through Cardrona.   

Lake Wakatipu - looking towards Queenstown

We reached a blustery Wanaka about 4pm and went to the Visitors’ Centre to discuss our options when visiting Franz Joseph Glacier on the West coast. Turns out that the only way you get to stand on the glacier is via helicopter, and these ‘combo heli-hikes’ as they’re called, are hundreds of dollars.  We hadn’t budgeted for that, so we will have to look at other options.

We stopped at a couple of viewing points by Lake Wanaka.  This lone tree in the water is famous, called the ‘Wanaka Tree’ (left) - it has many followers on Twitter and people are encouraged to take photos and post them online, so I’ve had a play with one of mine to make it all dream-like.

Lake Wanaka and the Wanaka tree

But it was an incredibly windy afternoon, so we retreated to our campsite for the night and planned for more hiking tomorrow.