Omakau

It was still very hot when we arrived at the Omakau golf course that afternoon but a strong breeze had come up which of course was both a help and a hindrance as we played but on a positive note helped to keep our temperatures down.

Rock and roll to the hole, please!

Omakau is a nine hole course and there can be a huge variation in the condition of these courses mainly because of decreasing membership numbers and loss of affordability to pay for green keepers. But

Very varied holes. 

Omakau is just the best nine hole course we can remember playing on - just fabulous with a good layout and an interesting variance of fairways, not flat but no steep climbs, an unseen gully, 2 clean ponds, some bunkers, conifers and tussock with some piles of schist to send your ball in any direction. It was in great, almost immaculate condition with good fairways and greens which need lots of irrigating in this hot dry weather.

Course was greener than it looks here.

As you can tell we really loved playing this course which is so very reasonably priced at $15 for 18 holes. Half the price and at least twice as good as other nine hole courses we have played recently.

Like Clyde this is one of the few courses in NZ that we haven't been able to stay overnight - I think it is a bylaw of the area - so we spent the night in the free parking area just over the bridge from town, down by the stream, not arriving there until about 7.00pm. It's a huge area, some of it being open, but with lots of crannies in and around the trees for overnighting. We had stayed there for 2 nights 6 years ago and there were several other vans staying at that time as well but last night we were the only ones there. However we felt quite safe and were far enough away from the light traffic to not be disturbed. Len checked the stream out for fish but couldn't see any to make him optimistic enough to get the spinner out!

St Bathans

On our travels 6 years ago, whilst we were cycling the Otago Rail Trail, we missed visiting the historic tiny village of St Bathans which we have since regretted so that was on the To Do list this time around. So that is where we headed after staying the night at the lovely tranquil POP just out of Alexandra only stopping for petrol and beer. We passed through the little villages of Omakau and Lauder, which are on the cycle trail, before turning off at Becks.

St Bathans is a tiny wee historic settlement famous  from the gold mining days. 

Novel extraction techniques here.

The spectacular Blue Lake with it's turquoise hue and striking, almost vertical white cliffs is a breathtaking sight. Being 75 metres deep it was man-made as part of the gold excavations and sluicing which started around 1887 and had the deepest hydraulic lift operating in the world.

A hopeful poster!

A popular and only pub!

Bank holiday me thinks!

There are just a few historic buildings remaining, amongst them being the Post Office, bank, an old cottage and, most notably, the Vulcan Pub which is still kept busy with sightseers. According to Jude, the friendly bar lady, there are only 12 residents in the village but there are a handful of holiday cottages with some more being built. The Vulcan Hotel is known for being haunted by a ghost named Rose. Rose being a prostitute whose malignant spirit still pervades the hotel, particularly Guest Room 1.
We didn't get any ghostly feelings in the bar (and believe me when I say if there was one there I would feel it!) but perhaps she does just keep herself to Room 1.
We enjoyed our lunchtime beer accompanied by good chips and the best muffin we have had for a long time, this being baked by Jude herself.

Still recovering from all the golf we have played in the last 3-4 days we then drove back down the road a little way to the by-donation DOC campsite at the Domain where we found ourselves a good spot where I could hang my handwashing discreetly on the fence. The Domain is a huge area with plenty of places to settle in so we were surprised when a couple in a car set up their tent really close to us right on the edge of the vehicle track. But no worries! There were probably about 10 vehicles or tents sparsely spread through the Domain overnight. We both slept pretty well.

The long walk it is then!

Sunday we drove back up the lake where we parked and did the 1.5 hour walk around it rather than the 50 minute loop track which just takes you down one side of the lake which, in hindsight, I would have preferred as it was SO hot with no breeze and virtually no shade. Despite drinking lots of water I had to keep putting my head down low to stop myself fainting. 

View from the other side. 

Debussy at the far end. 

I felt a bit better once we were on the homeward stretch and could appreciate the impressive views that made it worth doing. The track was quite rough in places and not that obvious so we had to keep on the lookout for the orange markers. 

No sliders around here I hope!

There had been some slips and one steep section on shingle required us to not put a foot wrong.

It wasn't until we returned to the accessible swimming end of the lake that the badly needed breeze gave flight but we were very hot and appreciated being able to go for a swim in the refreshing beautiful lake with a few others. 

It's nice once you're in!

The water felt so nice! The lake deepens really quickly so with just a few steps you are in over your head.

Feeling revitalised by the swim we were soon on the road back to Omakau.

Tarras Golf, Cromwell and Dunstan Golf Club at Clyde

From Wanaka we travelled along the north side of the Clutha river towards Tarras which is on the early part of the Lindis Pass road. Again you are surrounded by the barren hills, now with sprinkled bushes, and then the opening out into the valley with flatter lands, a less jagged skyline, outcrops of schist rocks and boulders, sheep, cows, pivot sprinklers creating vivid green squares on the brown landscape and then the first winery we had seen for a while.

Tarras golf club is a memorable 9 hole country course without a clubhouse. 

The grand entrance of the golf club!

We parked on the opposite side of the road to the first tee which has a box on a pole beside it where you pay your green fees of only $15 each. It's run by volunteers, the man mowing near us on number 2 fairway telling us that it, surprisingly, it has around 500 members most of them from overseas, mainly America. We're not sure where they socialise after a game as the only building there seemed to be for equipment storage, but we could see a small shed with a toilet.

Putting under water!

It surely was a true country course with cow and sheep poo, mostly dried fortunately, grassy knobs and dandelions on the dried "fairways", fences around the greens to keep the animals out and long walks between the greens and the next tee.

Just another fairway gate!

A couple of the holes are on the opposite side of the road. It was sunny and hot but better to play on than I was expecting - just took us a bit longer to play than normal because of the extra walking between holes.

Cromwell was our next stop, passing vineyards on the way and seeing the Clutha River flowing into the man made, very blue Lake Dunstan. Cromwell seems  such a new town with many new builds underway and the historic area, which we walked around on our last visit, not being visible as you drive in. 

On stage at Lake Dunstan!

The new NZMCA park which is well situated, being just over the road from Lake Dunstan, was our stopover for the night.

Rotary Glen park. 

Only 10 vans allowed there although it is a very large area with trees around - we were number 8 and being a brilliant but very hot day it was good to get the chairs out and have a read in the shade under the trees with a gentle breeze blowing when we arrived. The only downside is that the whole area is very dry and dusty which means a little more housework than normal will need to be done!

The lake is long, beautiful, blue and very peaceful. Len thought about having a fish but there was a lot of weed in that part of the lake. There is an excellent cycle track alongside the lake which, again, we did last time here so in the morning, after a wander around that part of the lake, we left to do the normal dumping, water top-up etc. This time it is about playing some more golf courses, the ones we didn't do when cycling the Otago Rail Trail in 2013.

With this in mind we hit the busy road again passing the free camping spots by the narrowing lake just stopping at Champagne Gully to check the fishing for which there was still too much weed.
After driving past the Clyde Dam and through the village we found the Dunstan Golf Club which is right next to the campground. This is one of the few courses where you are not allowed to stay overnight because of the council bylaws.

The flat 9 hole course is in a great setting with houses over the road from No 1 fairway and the awesome hills on the other side. It looked so pristine compared with Tarras where we had just played the day before. More expensive at $25 each but really good to play on having fast fairways with the wind behind ( slow against!) and nice greens which were very kind to me. Different tees for the second 9 holes made it more interesting and although there were bunkers aplenty there were no water hazards.

Wonder where this will end up?

We had a bit of a delayed tee off waiting first for the Friday mens group, who just play 13 holes, to come through no 10 - it was close to 3.30 before we got started so later than usual before we left.

A POP in the country in Dunstan Road, near the cycle trail about 10 minutes out of Clyde, looked like a good place to stay and it was. Busy with about 10 NZMCA vans there, a toilet, tub, clothesline, book exchange and preserves/jams for sale it was a nice peaceful spot although we just missed out on Happy Hour! Payment was by donation and we bought a little jar of tomato relish as well.

Lake Hawea & Wanaka

The wind was strong and noisy overnight in our spot by the lake but although there seemed to be quite a lot of vans in various nooks and crannies - only 4 in ours - we weren't disturbed by other campers. The drive down the right side of Lake Wanaka is stunning with the corn-hued and brown coloured mountains with bracts of shadow and sun on either side of the blue lake and the feeling of isolation with the road not yet being too busy.

It wasn't long before we reached the neck of Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea where they were originally joined. 

Moody Hawea

Then we were in awe of the view of Hawea on our left - golden, barren mountains, bluey grey water with windswept waves running down the lake and the moody textures of clouds and shadows. Halfway down signs of civilisation begin to return with sheep, dotted farm houses, crops and the return of phone reception.

Remembering Hawea from our previous visit when we had biked there from Wanaka we stopped just beyond the village at the 9 hole Lake Hawea golf course being greeted and welcomed by Tim, the owner. 

Thrash in the making!

The wind was still sweeping down the valley but we played 18 holes on the pretty straight fairways  with the challenge of big dry ditches across a lot of them, the most difficult being the 4th where the soggy ditch is right in front of the green. I didn't learn and landed in it both times but there were no bunkers to worry about.  

A birdie for Trish!

Being in the flat valley and surrounded by the mountains it was a picturesque spot with the little pond which is home to ducks and other birds adding to this.

We could have stayed there the night but it would probably be noisy being right beside the main road so, instead, we continued on, into Wanaka which was very busy with tourists, firstly visiting the new service area being trialled by the council for self contained motorhomers. You can dump your waste and rubbish here, fill up with water and also have a shower all for free. What an amazing service although we think you should have to pay something for it. Afterwards we parked behind the Wanaka Districts Club for just $10 a night with only one other motorhome for company.

We walked downhill from here, across the park area into town, having decided that an Italian meal would be nice but Francisco's was fully booked and there was a wait of well over an hour at it's sister restaurant over the road. So we popped around the corner to Big Fig, a very popular and highly regarded middle eastern restaurant where you choose your plate size and they fill it up with the choices laid out in the cabinet before you. You need to just share a table wherever you can so is very casual with the food being delicious. Just as well as we were extra hungry with not having eaten very much while we were playing golf!

We had a quiet night in the club carpark and today has been pretty cruisy. We met up with 2 of my old Physio classmates, Mary, her husband John, and Jude who both live close by, for a slow lunch at the Lake Bar. Great to catch up again after many, many years. 

Trish, Jude & Mary.

Afterwards we popped along to Mary's house so she could share some of the veges from her prolific garden with us which meant we could even have mint sauce with our lamb chops tonight!

We have parked for the night again behind the Wanaka club - tomorrow we will go to play golf at Tarras on the way to Cromwell.

Haast Pass towards Wanaka

Brilliant sunshine greeted us on Monday  at the Haast Santana POP and after a brief walk, a visit to the shop where we were parked and then the Information Centre to look at their displays about the area and to buy a little pamphlet regarding the many walks through the Haast Pass we set off on the very picturesque drive towards Wanaka.

The road winds through spectacular scenery  with the steep mountains of Mount Aspiring National Park, lush rainforest, tumbling rivers and golden tussock covered hills. As with the west coast all the bridges are one way and there are many walks starting from the highway, ranging from just 5 minutes to 5 hours. Like last time we were here we chose the shorter ones to do so we could get to the closest northern end of Lake Wanaka before it got too late.

First up was the Roaring Billy 25 minute return walk through a nice podocarp and silver beech forest with plenty of tree ferns to the Haast River with its wide, stony bed giving us a great view of the waterfall on the other side. A canopied jet boat was there taking some of the many tourists for a spin.

Next up was just a 5 minute circular bush walk to a tranquil but cold mountain stream at Pleasant Flat where you can camp overnight. Across the road you get impressive views of Mount Hooker across the grassy plain. It would be even more awesome with winter snow about.

Had a small fall getting down here!

Thunder Creek Falls was another 5 minutes walk to see, passing through kamahi and silver beech to the spectacular, and aptly named, 28 metre falls.

Fantail Falls 

Many pretty additions to this log!

Fantail Falls, not nearly so impressive, were not far down the road and parking was very tight. There are just so many tourists on the road at the moment, with, according to the paper, an influx of visitors from China with it being the Chinese New Year. We are being warned about their driving but it was a couple of young guys, from France we think, who nearly did some damage to the front of our bus at the Falls when they tried to swing to park in front of us even though we were sitting right there. They hit our bikes and the passenger got out with a beer in his hand being very blasé. Luckily we couldn't see any damage to us and their car had so many scrapes and dents we wouldn't know what was new on theirs! Scary how he was driving though.

We then parked at the Cameron Flat camping area to do the hour return walk to the Blue Pools which we were so awed by on our last trip. 

Blue Pool from swing bridge. 

It goes through silver beech forest to a couple of swing bridges overlooking the pools at the mouth of the Blue River. They are a lovely blue colour but not as impressive this time as on our last visit, the colour dependant on how much rainfall there has been. It was a very busy walk however with quite a lot of people standing, swimming or sunbathing by the pools. Often you can see large brown or rainbow trout but there were probably too many people disturbing them today.

After that it wasn't long before we arrived at the Boundary Creek DOC carpark and camp which is our home for the night. A lovely spot right on the lake and true to form with the Wanaka wind.

Off the shoulder, due to strong wind from the left!

It is whipping strongly down the lake and is very noisy in the trees but luckily our spot seems quite sheltered. No cellphone coverage here though. We know there are mosquitos about but we're keeping our vents closed tonight  and hoping that we have no mice visitations - apparently they were a huge problem for campers last year. If we can keep the mozzies out then surely we can keep the mice out!

Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers to Haast

We left Okarito early Saturday afternoon enjoying the drive through to Franz Josef past Lake Mapourika. We had last walked to the Glacier in 2004, having only visited Fox Glacier, not Franz Josef, when we were down 6 years ago. 

In search of a glacier!

It's  about a 1.5 hour return walk from the carpark which was very busy - a longer walk than it used to be as we were stunned to see how much the glacier has receded in those 15 years. 

It's all the way up there!

They have several signs along the way showing you where the glacier used to come to and it's pretty clear that in a few more years there will be nothing to see at all!

Shock-horror!

This is so devastating and just one of the tragedies resulting from global warming.

Pretty blue tinges enhance the white glacial ice but a large patch of bare rock right in the middle of the glacier does nothing for the picture with the hot sun making it feel even more alarming.

It was here when we last were!

The walk itself encapsulates nature however with the little stream crossings, stones, boulders and the concrete coloured water flowing down the river from the glacier.

Picturesque Peter's Pool.

After returning from the glacier viewpoint we did the nice little 25 minute return walk through the bush to Peters Pool which is a Kettle Lake created by a large boulder falling as the glacier melted, leaving a depression which subsequently filled with water. It was named after a 9 year old who used to camp there.

Our camp spot for the night was at the Franz Josef MNZCA  park, a great spot being surrounded by trees and a very close walk into the village. There were about 12 vans there for the night, one bus couple also coming from Whakatane.
We enjoyed walking out for dinner to the wordy King Tiger Eastern Eating House, both of us choosing well with an Indian curry for Len and a Thai curry for me.

Fox Glacier was our destination for today but we decided to visit Lake Matheson again on our way. Everyone else had evidently decided the same thing as the too-small carpark was packed and we had to drive round and round it multiple times before finding a spot. It was tempting to just leave and drive on. However it is a pretty walk up and down and around the lake with good viewing points.

T by the  lake!

Again, there was a ripple on the lake and we didn't get the amazing reflections that you see on a lot of calendars but still enjoyed the walk.

The drive into the Fox Glacier carpark was different to what we remembered, probably because, like Franz Josef glacier, it has also receded hugely, even since we were there 6 years ago.

This was glacier when we were here last.

They have built up the roadway so you see a lovely turquoise long pool on the left side and the river bed with it's grey water on the right before arriving at the carpark.

One of the many steam crossings. 

Another hot day and some steep bits on this "easy 1.3 hour" walk with some little stream crossings over boulders.

Couldn't walk past this point last time. 

We saw quite a few people really struggling especially on the last steep rise before the view point. Just like Franz Josef there will be no glacier to see in a few more years - quite devastating.
It was getting quite late in the day but we kept to our plan of driving to Haast after leaving Fox Glacier, passing Bruce Bay with the usual abundance of logs and driftwood lining the beach, a few houses on the other side of the road and a mobile coffee van.

Bruce's Bay. 

 We could have camped at the Lake Paringa DOC camp but the reviews weren't great and we knew there would be lots of mosquitos so we carried on past the scenic Lake Moeraki on the left to the Knight's Point Lookout carpark where we just went in and out as we could see the view from the bus as well as everyone batting at the mozzies!

There are 2 good short walks at Ship's Creek but having done these last time we carried on to the Santana POP in Haast, feeling very lucky to get a spot as they only allow 5 vehicles.

Relaxed now, but wait til the mossies come out!

Two caravans were already parked and 2 arrived just in front of us. Payment is by donation to St John's.  The night was quiet except inside our bus where mainly Len had a frenzied time, while we were trying to play scrabble, slapping at all the mosquitoes flying around his head. We figured out they were getting through the tiny gap in the overhead vent so once we closed that and resorted to some spray we finally slaughtered the last one about midnight, not being disturbed by any in our ears whilst trying to sleep. So the battle was won!

Okarito

1st February and a day that yielded to quite heavy rain and winds in the morning but it was time to move on towards Franz Josef. Before leaving we filled up with diesel in Hokitika  arriving at the pump in time to see a big rental motorhome being pushed off the forecourt as they put petrol in the tank instead of diesel! There was no way it was going to start - poor people.

Too wet to walk!

We might have done some short walks on the way down but weren't encouraged to do so by the rain so instead we just stopped for coffee in the lovely large DOC campsite by Lake Mihinapua, drove through Ross where we had done the Goldfields walk 6 years ago, and then had lunch by Lake Ianthe. Despite the rain the scenery was great with the bush and all the flowing water from the mountains, from little streams to wide rivers.

After passing the Whataroa golf club, which is right on the main road, and where we played and stayed 6 years ago, we turned off to the coastal Okarito wetlands with it's lagoons and plentiful birds and where there are a couple of good walks. After booking into the basic campground we set straight off to do the 3 mile pack track, a 3.5 hour return walk, so we could get to the beach and lagoon at the end before we would be cut off by the tide. 

Let's try this one today. 

It's described as an easy walk going over the lagoon boardwalk, then through coastal forest to climb over Kohuamarua Bluff so there is quite a bit of up and down. 

Wait for me!

When we arrived at the viewpoint before going down to the beach and lagoon we had a good view through the binoculars, managing to see one of the few remaining white herons which is what we had hoped to do. 

Looking out to 3 mile bay.

So that was great and meant that we could retrace our steps back to camp as, to be honest, I was feeling a bit knackered by then anyway! That night, with the cleared sky, the number and brightness of the stars was a truly awesome sight. Starry starry night for sure and worth not being able to sleep to watch them!

Are they whitebait?

The next day we set off in the same direction, over the same boardwalk, to climb up to the Okarito Trig (1.5 hours return) from where, we were told, you could get great views of the mountains. Well this was amazing - a Must Do walk!

Fantastic views of the Southern Alps.

Panoramic views on top which swept around from the sea and lagoons, across the mountains (including Mount Cook) beyond the green forest, to the sea and lagoon to the south.

I'm over here!

Just fantastic and one of the best views you could wish for - so pleased we had a clear day without the sea fog which had been hanging around.

Once back at camp it was nearly time to check out so after parking the bus just down the road we had a walk down to the beach between a couple of the lagoons where there were quite a few birds.

No gold to be found, especially when you don't really know what you are looking for!  Next stop Franz Josef!