One Year Away

Penny

For the past few days, we have been
making our way north on the West coast of the South Island of New Zealand.  According to
many, the west coast drive is among the most beautiful in the world.
The road passes by small towns and villages (some only have about 100
residents, if that), beautiful
beaches, national parks and many scenic
areas.  The landscape is very diverse and changes constantly.  One moment you are face to face with a huge glacier the next you are picking pebbles on a gorgeous ocean beach.

Along the way we have made random stops
to enjoy some of the sights and activities that the different towns
and villages have to offer.  To date we stopped in places like
Puzzleworld, an old gold mine, an old gold mining town, a fishing
village and have completed many short but lovely walks to different
view points, waterfalls, glaciers, beaches and fur seal colonies.  The
sights and activities have been varied, ranging from amazing to
just weird.  Here are some of the highlights and how we have been spending some of our time in New Zealand.

• Puzzleworld is a children’s and adult’s
  playground located in Wanaka.  The site allows people to
  play with a
  variety of puzzles and brain teasers.  They also claim to have one of
  the world’s largest modern mazes which was built in 1973 and for $10
  NZD per adult, you can wander the maze and visit their illusion
  rooms.  It took Joe and I a total of 40 minutes to complete the maze
  (usually takes people between 30 minutes to 1 hour).
• In Franz Joseph, we were unable to book
  the tour we wanted to climbed the Franz Joseph glacier (it was full).
  So we visited the glacier independently.  After climbing over
  barriers with signs claiming “Extreme Danger” – we weren’t the
  only ones – we were able to get really close to the glacier.  We
  were happy to save the $180 NZD.
• The Department of Conservation in New
  Zealand has established many short and long walks along the  popular
  tourist route of Highway 6.  A short 10 minute walk in Tauranga Bay
  took us up close to a fur seal colony.  Another 30 minute walk lead us to some gorgeous waterfalls.

New Zealand is a small country but around every corner there is something to do.  It’s unlike countries in South East Asia where there is usually a pretty clear top 5 list of things to do.  Here there are literally hundreds of places to go and things to do and just deciding where to stop out of the many choices becomes the challenge.