tramping new zealand

Having some paranoia about icy roads after clear nights, it was a slow start. I might have overachieved with my procrastination. The sun had been out for an hour or two when I finally finished drinking coffee and headed off.

Not far up to the Blue Pools car park, where the track had been recently reopened after some bridge building over the Makaroa River, and the track was upgraded. The car park was surprisingly large.

For some reason, I’d never stopped before despite having been past there at least ten times. Not even when I’d ridden my five-speed bike, back in the days when a fair proportion of the road east from Haast Pass was gravel and I was in my first year at architecture school.

It’s a bit more than a kilometre through the forest to get to the new suspension bridge, with its view of the mature trout hovering in the clear blue water. Other tourists bustled past in their haste to get to the attraction, until I pointed out what I was staring at.

“Oh, that’s amazing!”

For sure, as I counted six legal-sized fish visible immediately below in the pool.

The Blue Pools are well worth a visit. Their clarity is like there’s no water there, just the pebbles on the bottom visible as clear as can be. And that intense blue colour.

The road on the other side of Haast Pass had no traffic, as it was now past lunchtime. Still icy in the permanently shaded curves, with the grip doing a bit to stop the car from sliding around. Down at the big Landsborough River, which had changed its name to Haast, the frost/ice was all clear. The sky was full blue.

Too late to make the almost 100 km detour to Jackson Bay, but I’ve been down there a few times, once to Stafford Hut, and the second, hitchhiking slowly down to the end of Cascade Road and then tramping down the coast to Gorge River, Big River, and the Hollyford, before ending up at Te Anau after 21 days.

However, I wanted to arrive at Fox before dark. I stopped off at the salmon farm at Paringa for a 3 pm lunch of the world’s most expensive sandwich, as the kitchen was closed. Excellent salmon on rye.

I’d booked a motel with a huge price discount, $76 a night, and realised two nights would be the minimum stay I needed after two full days of travel. That was about $200 a night cheaper than similar accommodation on the other side of the Alps.

I prefer Fox to Franz; it has fewer tourists, but both glaciers are disappearing rapidly.

No great hurry to return home. Make the most of where you are while travelling, I say.