Motukiekie Beach

Driving north from Hoki, over a hill, we noticed some great-looking sea stacks and such and, looking at our NZ Frenzy guidebook (our constant companion), determined they were just off from Motukiekie Beach, one of the author's many excellent recommendations. At low tide, one can walk out on the beach and get quite near them. So we parked, looked over the tide situation, and waited an hour or so for the water to subside. Then we walked a mile or two along the beach, gawking at it all, from the driftwood and beach pebbles, to the cliffs and waterfalls above, to the pounding surfs, to the sea stacks just beyond reach. One other person was there, initially, a young woman from Vienna, about to start vet school in Edinburgh. Later a fisherman appeared on the rocks. Great New Zealand experience!

Hokitika, 2014

You have to love a place that calls itself Hoki, and especially if it is home to the Museum of Sock Manufacturing Machines. Hoki is all this and more, featuring itself as the artsy-fartsy capital of the South Island. Anyhow, we like it, and spent a morning visiting its several shoppes and boutiques before lunch on the beach.

But before Hoki, Okarita, setting for one of New Zealand's
Booker prize winners

Okarita Lagoon

Hokitika town clock

The world famous Hokitika Sock Manufacturing Museum

Thus

Thus, up closer

Larger machines; we bought Penelope some kiwi socks...

In one of the greenstone (jade) workshoppes

In another, looking at a pile of raw material, which they will
not sell...the supply is limited, and this is what the jewelry
comes from...

Old town free library, now town museum

They say it's your second book that determines
whether you'll be a real writer...how about if
your second book wins the Mann Booker and
you're 26 years old; the movie will be shot on
location in Hoki...you heard it first here

Hoki has lots of outdoor sculpture, this being some...sort of

Driftwood sculpture is big here

Thus

Fox Glacier, 2014

There are two glaciers coming down from Mt. Cook and environs to the west coast, the Franz Jozef glacier and the Fox glacier. We spent the night in Fox glacier village, then visited the glacier the next morning. We had visited it before in 2009, and this time were impressed with how much it has skrunk in these five year...completely around a corner of the canyon.

Looking across the canyon; this is a glacier in full retreat!

Five years ago it would have been right in the center of this

Remnant

Still enough for professionally-guided tours 

Fox Glacier, 2014

We were there that day in 2009, and saw the ice fall that killed
two Australian brothers

West Coast

We crossed Haast Pass the next morning, drove through tiny Haast, and then began what would be a week of driving the South Island's west coast. Here, it alternates between a forbidding bush and an even more forbidding Tasman Sea coastline. But there are incredible sights along the way.

In the bush, near the coast, vines strangle the
trees

Shoreline, violent surf, no one in sight for miles

More trackless, inpenetrable bush

Here the crashing waves have undermined the cliff beneath
the viewing shelter

Still a pretty nice view

Ditto

North By Northwest

From the Kawarau we drove on back north, then northwest, then west across the Haast Pass, which we'd also seen in 2009. The giant montane lakes along the route, Lake Hawea and then Lake Wanaka, again, were impressive. Our campsite at Cameron Flat was scenic. The sand flies were more numerous and aggressive than we've seen anywhere but Milford. I'll do a separate post on sand flies, the South Island's largest bio-mass, a bit later.

Lake Hawea; giant, beautiful blue, almost no one in sight

Ditto

Ditto again

You round a corner and cross a little ridge, and there is Lake
Wanaka, another giant lake east of the Mt. Aspiring range,
one we've seen lots of before

We camped that night, along with one or two other parties, at the DOC campground
at Cameron Flat; scenic enough, but the sand flies were awful; the scores of them
trapped between out (nylon mesh) tent and its fly made such a racket we thought it
was raining

At the cooking pavilion that DOC campgrounds often provide, a spider's web
has netted half a dozen sand flies

In this amazing sequence, the spider (Shelob), devours one hapless sand fly

And then heads off to another

Vicki takes refuge in the car until nightfall, when the accursed sand flies go away

Kawarau Bridge, 2014

It's not a place you just drive by, even if you've seen it before. Rarely does a physical place so well manifest the nature of its people, the very soul, the raison d'etre, the whatever, of New Zealand, South Island, Otago, well, certain parts of Queenstown anyway. We had to go in, especially to see whether the gift shoppe had any clever new T-shirts or fridge magnets.

Old Kawarau Bridge, Birthplace of Bungy

The original launch site for AJ Hackett Bungy

Central hall of the reception/gift shoppe/museum/restaurant/multimedia
expo/wine tasting complex

New T-shirt, predictable design; STAY TUNED: I have a great
video of a young woman jumping off a bridge, to be posted on my
YouTube channel someday soon when we get decent wifi
again

Anduin And The Argonath

Students of the Lore and fellow members of the Fellowship of the Ringwaifs will recall The Fellowship's voyage down the Great River, the Anduin, past the Argonaths. It's all north of Queenstown. We'd visited before, but it merits another look.

They're still there, blasted through by all the popular jet boat rides...

The Great River

Ditto

Ditto again

Along the north side cliffs is a vineyard of some note, from which we bought a
bottle in 2009; the Kiwi dollar was at .56USD back then...

And just a bit further down the river is one of New Zealand's great historic sites,
the original Kawarau Bridge, Birthplace of Bungy