When we planned our trip we didn’t pay enough attention to how slow traveling the roads here would be. When we looked at the distance between Queenstown and Tasman we thought we could drive it in 1 day. But it turns out that while being about 500 miles apart many of the roads are curvy mountain roads so it takes over 11 hours to drive.
We decided to add in a night at the Legacy Te Waonui hotel to break the drive into 2 days. We ended up having a great time during our stay. We left Queenstown early in the morning so we would have time to do the Franz Josef Glacier Walk.
Kuah and I both enjoyed the walk. It was a little under 4 miles round trip with a gradual incline ending at 436 feet. The path was wide and well maintained. Partway up there was a great place to view the glacier. This was one thing I had really wanted to see but didn’t want to do the helicopter trip. So I felt really lucky to view it on a hike. Then we walked a bit further up to a good viewpoint for the river. However, being fall the river was pretty much dried up. It was still a really lovely walk.
We also got to see a deer on the way up. It came out one side of the path and walked around a bit before crossing over. It saw us but didn’t seem bothered by us. We were pretty close and it made the hike super fun.
After our hike we headed to the hotel. The staff there were very nice. When the receptionist pulled up our registration he looked at it and asked me to excuse him for a moment. Then he ran away. I had no idea what was going on. When Kuah came in from parking the car I told him and we waited. Soon the receptionist came back with hot towels and kiwi juice. It turns out that our reservation came with a welcome drink which was refreshing after our drive and hike.
Our room was fine but nothing special but we weren’t planning to spend too much time there. We had booked an hour in an outdoor hot tub near by at Waiho Hot Tubs. Our room had robes in them and the hotel receptionist said we could just walk over wearing them to the hot tub place across the street. It was really fun to be in a hot tub surrounded by so much nature. I was worried it might be buggy but is wasn’t at all.
The hotel room came with both breakfast and dinner. Since the hotel wasn’t crowded they were doing cooked to order breakfasts rather than a buffet. While this took a little more time we ended up with a breakfast we enjoyed. Then hit the road to Tasman.
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