Lake Wanaka, New Zealand

Saturday February 13 - Thursday February 18, 2010

Wanaka and Lake Hawea Station

The first priority as soon as we entered Wanaka was to buy Paula a new camera, as I described in a previous post.  That accomplished, we had dinner, during which Paula tried out several of the different settings on the camera using Tyler as the hapless subject.  These shots might give you the impression that Tyler always has his mouth open.  Those of you who know Tyler will not be surprised.

We stayed in a backpacker hostel for two nights - the first time we had tried such a place - and found it surprisingly OK.  It had a variety of accommodations available: sleeping on the floor in the hall, bunk beds in a dormitory, private rooms with shared bathroom, and a few doubles with ensuite bathrooms (i.e., you get your own bathroom right in the room, like a normal motel).  We had one of the latter.  It was small but clean and adequate.  We were subsequently warned by some other travellers we met that they aren't all that good.  From the point of view of stuffy older adults (like us), all-night parties and drunks barfing in the halls lost its appeal decades ago.  But in Wanaka we had none of those problems. 

On Sunday morning we attended worship service at a little Presbyterian church in Wanaka.  The pastor was an American expat, a lady who had emigrated to New Zealand about 40 years ago.  The evening before, we had walked from the hostel several blocks to the church just to scope it out and check the service time on their sign, and we were accompanied by a young woman from Michigan.  She had recently graduated from the University of Michigan, and was planning to join the Peace Corps in a few months.  In the meantime she and her brother were touring New Zealand, working as "WWOOFers" as they went along.  So what's a WWOOFer you ask?  It stands for "Worldwide Workers On Organic Farms".  It began as a tradition of young people being given lodging and meals for a few days by organic farmers in return for performing 4 hours of work around the farm each day.  The concept has now expanded to include Bed & Breakfast places and youth hostels.  If fact, the entire housekeeping crew in the hostel where we stayed were WWOOFers.

We visited the Department of Conservation visitors' center for Mount Aspiring National Park.  They had a wonderful display of large metamorphic rocks that had been sliced and polished on one face to show the beauty of the stones.

After the first couple of days we moved about 20 km away to Lake Hawea Station and stayed in a restored historic cabin that had been used for decades as a field house for sheep shearers.  

As in Australia, the term "station" denotes a large ranch and farm, often including government land that is leased from the Department of Conservation and includes much of the high country that can grow grass for sheep.  Lake Hawea Station has been in the same family for 90 years, and it is still a major operation raising especially Merino sheep for their extra fine wool.  Paula had an opportunity to go out into the countryside looking for plants and climbing partway up into the high country.

Lake Hawea is in the background in this photo, looking back down from the hill.

Paula bought this jade marble in Hokitika specifically to use as a scale reference in pictures like this.  The marble is about 2 cm in diameter.  Isn't this a pretty shot?

One evening we drove back into Wanaka to attend a performance of the New Zealand National Youth Brass Band.  They were wonderful!  The organization had held auditions in the major cities of New Zealand and selected about 40 young musicians who are now spending their summer touring with the band.  Many of them had been playing their instrument since third or fourth grade, and they were all virtuosos.  It never ceases to amaze me that a kid can get to be that good in six to eight years.