Haast Pass and Wonderful Wanaka

When we finished our trip down the west coast, we stopped briefly at the town of Haast, which one of our guidebooks described as the middle of nowhere. It definitely felt pretty remote with only a few farms along the dead end road further down the coast. We chose to avoid the detour and head inland on route 6 up the Haast Pass.

We made a few stops on our way up the pass and places with some great names such as Roaring Billy, Thunder Creek Falls and Fantail Falls. We also went for a walk at a place called Blue Pools, but after all the rain of the last few days the river was high and it wasn’t altogether clear where the pools were.

We made it to the top of the pass and began to lose altitude until we arrived at the far end of Lake Wanaka, which at 45km outside of town still felt quite remote! We headed through a gap in the mountains to reach Lake Hawea and drove along its shore before we got to Wanaka where we would stay the night. The campsite had a great view of the mountains, which the photo below doesn’t really do justice (but as you will see we got plenty of other photo opportunities the next day).

Determined to get outside and enjoy the nice weather that was forecast for the following day we planned a walk up Roy’s Peak, a famous half day walk in those parts. It definitely did not disappoint. Once we’d managed to find a spot to park (we weren’t the only ones making the most of the weather), we started making our way up the winding path that snaked its way across some very steep cow and sheep pasture. As the pasture turned into more of a mountain grassland, more of the view down to Lake Wanaka started to open out. It was a view that got better and better as we got higher and the Alpine peaks of Mount Aspiring National Park began to dominate the skyline.

We skipped out on the tourist covered traditional photo opportunity about two thirds of the way up and carried on to create our own just a bit higher up. With the sun out and the amazing views we stopped at the top to enjoy a picnic. Although the wind was a bit chilly that high up and we didn’t hang about on the way back down to help warm us up again.

Reaching the bottom and getting back to the camper at about 2pm, we wanted to find something else to do with the remainder of the sunny day, so we headed back to town to the I-Site (Tourist Info) to find out about short walks or activities in the area. The Wanaka and Queenstown region is famous for adrenaline activities. As a child Claire had always hoped she could learn to fly. Having failed to grow wings or gather enough fairy dust to attempt this unaided, she was instead keen to try some hang gliding which is the closet a human could get to bird flight. We discovered that while they didn’t do it in Wanaka they did in Queenstown and the I-Site recommended going that afternoon before the weather got worse the next day. And there was one space left on the 6pm “flight”.

So before you could say “Gareth was relieved that there wasn’t a second space”, we were headed south a day earlier than planned to the adventure capital of New Zealand so that Claire could run off the side of a mountain! We arrived in Queenstown with just minutes to spare and before you could say ‘where s the landing site’ Claire was driven off back up the mountain, leaving Gareth to try to await her return in a nearby pub!

After a quick safety briefing and instructions of how successfully run off the mountain Claire and her instructor fixed their eyes on a tiny flag and willed the wind direction to change so they could take off. For a split second it did and with no time to waste they were running over the cliff edge and into the air! The 10 minute flight was incredible; catching air currents and soaring over magnificent mountains, forests and valleys with a unique view of the landscape. A perfect way to enjoy a beautiful evening!

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After Claire landed she discovered that the wind had changed directly after her take off and none of the other hang gliders had managed to take off that evening, She felt so lucky to have had such a wonderful experience.