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canyonwalkerNew Zealand Travelog #10
Papatowai, NZ - Wed, 10 Apr 2024, 2:30pm
This morning we called an audible on our plans. The weather was looking to be crummy again for the whole day, clouds all day and rain starting soon, so it wasn't a great day for hiking in the mountains around Queenstown. Yeah, we made the best of it yesterday, but we weren't up for a second day of it. And today we didn't even get to start off with a beautiful sunrise over Lake Wakatipu. At dawn today the sky basically just transitioned from dark gray to medium gray. Instead of fighting it out to see if we could even see the mountains through the clouds we decided to pull the plug on Queenstown and do a roadtrip visiting waterfalls in The Catlins.
Re-planning the day's activity wasn't too hard. Hawk had already built a list of waterfalls we might like to see in the Catlins, the coastal mountains on the southeastern corner of New Zealand's South Island. When we were planning the trip we thought we might spend a day or so out in this region, but then we scrapped it because we were crunched for time with so many other worthy things we wanted to see and do. Well, when one of those worthier things (mountains around Queenstown) turns less worthy (due to rain), something else (the Catlins) moves up the list.
I'm jotting down these thoughts right now as we're halfway through our trip. We're in the small town of Papatowai eating lunch. It's a very small town. There's, like, one gas station here, and it's also a restaurant and general store.
So far it's been a good day. We've visited a few waterfalls already. The weather's not great; it's still cloudy and raining lightly. But while that's crummy weather for seeing mountains it's actually halfway decent weather for seeing waterfalls. We'll visit a few more after lunch and then complete our drive on to Te'Anau, where we're staying for the next two days.
Update: Here are journal entries I posted later with photos and details of the 4 waterfall hikes:
Papatowai, NZ - Wed, 10 Apr 2024, 2:30pm
This morning we called an audible on our plans. The weather was looking to be crummy again for the whole day, clouds all day and rain starting soon, so it wasn't a great day for hiking in the mountains around Queenstown. Yeah, we made the best of it yesterday, but we weren't up for a second day of it. And today we didn't even get to start off with a beautiful sunrise over Lake Wakatipu. At dawn today the sky basically just transitioned from dark gray to medium gray. Instead of fighting it out to see if we could even see the mountains through the clouds we decided to pull the plug on Queenstown and do a roadtrip visiting waterfalls in The Catlins.
Re-planning the day's activity wasn't too hard. Hawk had already built a list of waterfalls we might like to see in the Catlins, the coastal mountains on the southeastern corner of New Zealand's South Island. When we were planning the trip we thought we might spend a day or so out in this region, but then we scrapped it because we were crunched for time with so many other worthy things we wanted to see and do. Well, when one of those worthier things (mountains around Queenstown) turns less worthy (due to rain), something else (the Catlins) moves up the list.
I'm jotting down these thoughts right now as we're halfway through our trip. We're in the small town of Papatowai eating lunch. It's a very small town. There's, like, one gas station here, and it's also a restaurant and general store.
So far it's been a good day. We've visited a few waterfalls already. The weather's not great; it's still cloudy and raining lightly. But while that's crummy weather for seeing mountains it's actually halfway decent weather for seeing waterfalls. We'll visit a few more after lunch and then complete our drive on to Te'Anau, where we're staying for the next two days.
Update: Here are journal entries I posted later with photos and details of the 4 waterfall hikes:
- Purakaunui Falls
- Matai Falls— and bonus Horseshoe Falls
- McLean Falls
- Koropuku Falls
