New Zealand - Day 6

Wednesday May 23, 2018

We woke up at lake Wanaka to a beautiful misty morning. The rain storm had finally blown over and left us with wonderful weather. After a quick breakfast we headed up the road to the Blue Pools Walk in Mt Aspiring National Park. It was about an hour drive, but, again, the drive was pretty and overlooked Lake Hawea the majority of the time. There were a handful of spots to pull over, walk around, and enjoy the scenery.

Which is what we did.

We arrived at the Blue Pools car park around 9:30 am and took off down the path which  lead to a fun suspension bridge.

Eventually the path opened up to a rocky, shoreline and another suspension bridge overlooking the deep blue pools of the river (hence the name). It was quite the site.

All of the rocks on the beach were still covered in frost making it a bit treacherous to walk over, but that didn't stop us. We had a good time exploring down by the water and skipping the perfectly round and flat rocks that littered the area.

Once we had our fill we made our way back to Wanaka. I'm not sure the hour drive was completely worth the 30-45 minute stop. But it was nice to have a relaxing morning, and I can't say I regret doing it. Plus we came across a handful of awesome overlooks like this one...

Back in Wanaka we ate lunch and relaxed for a bit while deciding which hike we wanted to do for the afternoon. The options were Rob Roy Glacier, or Roy's Peak. The glacier was another hour's drive, so we decided to stick close to home and go with Roy's Peak even though I'd read it could be a bit of a tourist trap.

Funny thing about this hike. I got the distances confused between the glacier hike and the peak hike. We went into it thinking it'd be 3-5 kilometers and didn't bring any water or food with us. When we pulled up to the car park the sign said 13 kilometers... a pretty straightforward warning right? But noooo, we figured that was how long it'd take if you did the whole thing, we were just looking to go to the famous overlook. ROOKIE MISTAKE.

Even a couple hundred meters up from the parking lot we knew the hike would be totally worth it.

It was a pretty steady incline of switchbacks up the whole mountainside. The trail wasn't packed like it is during the summer months, but there was still quite a few people on it. Some we judged wouldn't make it to the top haha. After about 2 hours we hit the snow line.

This also happened to be the spot where I hit a wall. I'm a tad embarrassed to admit it, because I feel like I'm in reasonably good shape, but man, I was dying. I blame it on not being prepared mentally for such a long hike and also not having any water!

The stupidest part was I had my camelbak with me, but it didn't have any water in it! Instead I had loaded it with warm clothes. Rookie mistake number two.

It got so bad that I loaded up my camelbak bladder with snow, hoping it would melt. It never did. At one point we considered turning back; we could make out maybe two more switchbacks before we hit the famed "lookout spot" and agreed that we'd continue on until that point.

Boy am I glad we did. It was worth every step and then some. There it is. In all it's wonderfully famed glory, the famous Roy's Peak lookout.

As we waited for our turn (another couple was taking pictures when we arrived) to go out onto the lookout, this is what we saw on either side of the ridge:

We could look our over all of Lake Wanaka and the surrounding mountains. I can see why the hike is so popular.

Look close and you can see me.

Again I can't seem to narrow down the pictures... so you get to look at them all, or skim through. Up to you haha.

We met a nice guy from the Netherlands who was kind enough to snap some pictures for us.

He tried to convince us to continue the 30 minute trek up to the top of the peak, but his talk of how bitterly cold and windy it was up there and how the view wasn't as good as it is here combined with the way we were feeling didn't do it for us.

After a few final looks and pictures we started our decent back down the mountain fully satisfied.

Of course we had to stop a handful of times to enjoy the view as the sun was setting over the valley.

We also happened to pass a handful of people headed up at this time... I'm not sure what they were thinking. We had a pretty good time guesstimating how far they'd make it up before turning back though.

What a pretty place. By the time we got back to our room we were both starving, so we made some grub and then took advantage of the "hot pools" and sauna the Holiday Park had to offer. Another perfect ending to an awesome day.