The Davy’s sent out on our way from Christchurch, and our first stop was to their friend’s ranch called Glenfalloch Station (owned by Chas and Dietlind). The road in was not sealed (gravel) and there were a few places where we had to cross Fords (little creeks as we call them). I’m sure this is allowed in the rental agreement …
We met Dietind on the road to their Station and she gave us some instructions on how to get to their place. “Follow the road until it ends, and park wherever you’d like.” There are three or four cabins available to rent, and we parked nearby down the hill in a spot with a great view. There was a nice level pad, that would’ve been perfect for the camper, but I had a feeling it was intended for a helicopter. Tony mentioned that heli skiing was available here anyways.
Laura and I ventured through that station and took on a hike. Within 15 minutes of leaving, a helicopter came and landed … just missed it. Glad we didn’t park on their pad.
This was our first night in the camper, and we had a great sleep. It is completely self contained, and we have enough water / fuel for about three nights in the wild. The next morning we made breakfast, left a bottle of wine for Chas and Dietlind as a thanks (they were tough to connect with), and headed back along the rough road.
Link to the Glenfalloch Station website: http://www.glenfalloch-station.co.nz/
July 8, 2012 - Arthur’s Pass
To get to the West coast of New Zealand’s south island, we took one of about four passes over the mountain ranges of the interior. This one was called Arthur’s Pass. It is a small town and similar to our Roger’s pass at home. On our way we stopped into a town called Springfield; mostly for a snack but we found their giant donut for a photo op.
Since we were at elevation (and it’s the middle of the southern hemisphere’s winter) we decided to try out the one and only ‘campground’ in the area with powered stalls. We booked one of the two powered sites through YHA hostels. This got us a 240V power supply for the camper, and access to the hostel’s lounge, kitchen, bathrooms and showers.
Our camper normally uses a diesel heater, but the 240V power supply allows us to plug an electric space heater as well. It was a pretty cold night and probably around -4C outside. We got to figure out how to deal with a couple of the drafts in the camper (not that there were many) and ran into our first problems with the diesel heater. For some reason it would turn off after about an 15min to 2hrs. I was up most of the night restarting the heater. We duly noted the problem, had a quick breakfast at the Arthur’s Pass cafe and moved on to our next stop.
July 9, 2012 – Okarito
The journey to Okarito was about a 3.5 hour drive from Arthur’s pass. We arrived in the early afternoon, and found the one campsite in town. There was no one there, so we had the place to ourselves. Knowing that we had limited sunlight, we paid our camp fees for the night and headed off for a hike.
There are a several trail heads here, and we tried out the Trig walk. There were great views from the top.
Okarito is a very beautiful and quite location that is off the beaten path. Highly recommended if the weather permits a visit! There is an outfit in town that rents kayaks (but they were on holidays during our visit).
We had fantastic weather, and saw a lovely sunset. It was nice to get away from the crowds and have some time to ourselves.
July 10, 2010 - Franz Josef
We left Okarito early on July 10th and drove for about 45min to a town called Franz Josef for a busy day. We checked into the Rainforest Retreat which is a full service camper park, hostel and motel. (http://www.rainforestretreat.co.nz/).
On our list of ‘tourist’ things to do was a hike on the Franz Josef glacier. Previously, we would have had the option of taking a bus to the base of the glacier and hiking up for roughly 3 hours. There is an ice bridge that provides access to the glacier, and sometime during the spring a large portion of this bridge was swept away by the Waiho River below. The group which runs the Franz Josef tours shut down access via the ice bridge so the only option now was to fly in by helicopter.
This was fine for Laura and I. We got to ride on a helicopter for our first time. I really enjoyed it. Secondly, the price was still quite affordable.
Laura and I had our own helicopter ride going up, and were met at the top by our guide and the rest of our group. We went on a three hour guided hike of the glacier, and were told that this was one of the fastest moving glaciers. The guide told us the glacier moves approximately 1 meter a day where we were walking, and up to 5 meters / day in other locations higher up. I did some fact checking and in fact this is a fast moving glacier and moves approximately 10 times faster than a typical glacier. This is partly due to the low elevation (300m above sea level). We were also told a story about a plan which crashed onto the top of the glacier, and was not seen again for 60 years when it was recovered at the bottom …
The Franz Josef tour is certainly a tourist stop, but the glacier walk and heli ride was well worth the money. There is also ice climbing available on the glacier, but there are fewer excursions running due to the heli access. The climbing gear takes up too much room on the helicopters. Check out Derek’s blog to see his ice climbing excursion on Franz.
Next stop: Lake Wanaka and Queenstown
Thanks for reading!
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