Wanaka - Haast - Jackson Bay New Zealand

2923-E Olney-Sandy Spring Road Olney, MD  20832 Phone: 301-774-4646 Fax: 301-774-3610

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October 7, 2000

We drove to Wanaka where we bought gas then checked into the Wanaka Motor Park about 1/2 mile from the city center.  We should have stayed in Queenstown.  The town is dead as we start our Pub tour of Wanaka.  Pub #1 was Paddy's Bar where we watched the Waikatu vs. Wellington rugby game for a while.  They had the frozen taps with a twist.  They had stuck some coins into the ice.  Pub # 2 was The Fairways where they had the signs Jack Lives Here.  Before we left the bartender from the first bar showed up but we didn't think anything of it at the time.  Pub #3, Calaboose which means old jail.  They had a fireplace and they had like 5 private bathrooms which I have never seen.  Bedlow thought the bartender here was like a cartoon character the way he talked.  He gave us some short cut to the next bar and as we were walking up this path behind the bar we were thinking of what a good way to roll tourist.  Send them on some back path nowhere near the street.  Some guy starts walking the other way and we kept thinking the bartender was quick in calling his accomplice.  Paranoia or the beer since nothing happened.  Pub #4 was The Bullock Bar.  At this point when I was ordering my beer I thought to myself I wish I had kept track of all the different types of beer we have had on this trip.  The bartender from the first bar shows up again and we start thinking why is this guy following us.  There was this great dog sitting outside waiting for someone in the bar as we walked in and was still there when we left.  Pub #5 was the Purple Sage Steakhouse and Bar.  Bartender #1 shows up again. Four out of our first five bars.  They have a young crowd with a band playing.  After awhile we notice the band just keeps playing the same song that they were when we arrived.  Bedlow noticed the time so we kept track of how long it was.  Twenty minutes in Bedlow moves up and starts grooving.  It’s sort of a rock/Caribbean type song which would explain the white guy in the band with the dreadlocks.  I might just be getting old and think its weird but the main hairstyle here for the younger people is to not do anything at all to your hair.  Just keep it as big of a mess as possible.  The band goes on and on and it's getting pretty comical.  They finally finish and Bedlow tells me that we heard the last 37 minutes of the never-ending song.  Who knows how long they had been playing before we got there.  The last pub, #6 was The Barrows that was the jock pub.  There were a bunch of rugby, we think, players who had just finished a game that day and come straight to the pub.  There were a couple of strange looking guys who had dressed up in black face, arms and legs with bad Rastafarian wigs.  Last weird think of the night was this guy who tried to hug this girl and ended up basically tackling her to the ground.  Very Ringeye like since he ended up with the girl.  We got back to the camper and I can't find my watch.  I had noticed on the way out that I didn't have it on my wrist.  I thought it was just in the camper but after tearing the place apart that night and the next morning I couldn't find it.  The lady cleaning the bathroom didn't find it and when I left my card with the manager and called two days later no one had turned it in.  Not bad I had it maybe 10 days before losing it.

October 8, 2000

We got up in the morning and became true tourists by stopping at Puzzling World.  Outside the building is all o over the place and they have a clock tower that balances one corner at a severe angle.  Inside the had all these illusions the best of which I thought were these holograms of famous people like Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln.  Their were nine of each and completely surrounded the room up to the 10 foot high ceiling.  The faces were all cut into the wall so you could reach into them.  The effect was no matter where you stood the faces all followed you.  Even if you got up close and looked up the top one was looking down.  The second part was you start to see them as coming out of the wall so you start reaching at them.  The guy who runs the place said your brain just isn't used to a face going in so it compensates and thus the illusion.  The next part of Puzzling World was a human maze to get from the start to all four corners of the maze to the top of four towers.  The maze includes foot bridges that go over top of the maze.  They said the average time to do it in is 45 minutes to an hour.  Scott got one corner fast then bogged down, claimed the whole thing was giving him a headache and quit.  I got stuck in the first corner and probably took 20 minutes to get my first corner.  The next ones dropped easier afterwards but I was ready to quit after about 10 minutes.  I finished in about 45 minutes.   The biggest pain was finishing.  You have to go back out the way you came in and that took me a good 10 - 15 minutes.  The lady running the gift shop said that they will be adding a major illusion room like the big giant head room every year for the next three years including a puzzling real restroom.

 We started heading to the glaciers from Puzzling World which was in Wanaka itself.  We made a couple of quick stops at some really pretty spots in the valley where there were really rough rapids and waterfalls.  The quick stops were at the Gates of Haast which is the beginning of the Haast Pass, Fantail Falls, and Thunderstream Falls.  Once you come through the Haast Pass and into Haast you leave the mountains and enter a rainforest.  We headed south first to Jackson Bay in hopes of seeing more penguins.  The road to Jackson Bay was straight as an arrow and was like driving in a tunnel because of the rainforest overgrowing the road. About five kilometers outside of Jackson Bay we saw a penguins crossing sign but as usual we saw no penguins.  Jackson Bay is pretty much the end of the world.  It is a little fishing village where tourists come to see penguins.  We got to the end and did about a 45 minute roundtrip hike around a mountain to Ocean Beach where the penguins were supposed to be in mating season.  Again no penguins but it was a beautiful cove and worth the walk through the rainforest.  We thought back to our Memorial Stadium days with Doug and kept thinking where Charlie would be lurking.  We got back to the camper then went to town to eat.  That is we drove 25 yards to the only diner, The Cray Pot.  The lady had 6 tables in a trailer looking structure, three tables for four and three tables for two.  We both had the fish of the day called Turbot which she showed us in a fish poster.  It looked like a flounder but tasted sweeter. 

We started north again and stopped at the World Heritage Hotel Bar in Haast for a beer so Scott could say he drank in every bar in Haast and Wanaka.  There were a couple of signs ranting about the conservationist who had got rid of the forestry business on the West Coast near Haast in 1995.  They basically warned conservationist not to come to Haast and whine about conservation since it put a lot of people out of work in this area.  One sign was actually a cutaway of the last tree cut down along with the chainsaw that did the cutting.  Started north again with a quick stop at Knights Point Lookout which had a great view of the coastline.  The point was named in a strange fashion.  Knight was the name of the dog of the man who surveyed the coast for the highway.

 Our last stop before Fox Glacier was the Munro Beach Walk.  Our last chance for a penguin sighting.   This was another area where they were supposed to be in mating season.  The walk was supposed to be about 1 1/2 hours roundtrip.  It was pouring rain but I was on a mission to see more penguins in the wild.  Scott decided this was a chance to take another run.  I headed out walking and he got ready to run.  This was another really cool walk to this secluded beach. The first neat thing was this swing bridge you had to use to cross a river.  Scottie passed me a little after the bridge then turned around and passed me on his way out and gave me the keys to the camper.  The beach was great.  It had a stream that was coming out of the rainforest running into the Tasman Sea.  It was real pretty but for the last time penguin disappointment.  At least we got lucky to see the two we did but it was in the last place you would expect. Not on a beach but crossing the road a good 100 feet up a cliff during our first stop in the Catlins.  Scott passed me again twice doing a second circuit and then he headed up the coast towards Fox Glacier.  I met him up the road at 6:34 PM.  While I was on the side of the road with my emergency blinkers on a Britz camper stopped to offer assistance to me thinking I was having problems.  The guy almost had problems himself when he almost slid of the side of the road while braking in the grass.  We got to Fox Glacier and checked into the Fox Glacier Holiday Park's camper section. 

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