Words and Light

There’s a lot of water in New Zealand, and it’s all beautiful.

Our next stop after Fox Glacier was Queenstown, so we took Highway 6 south. It’s a gorgeous route that follows the Haast River, first skirting around the edges of Mount Aspiring National Park and then delving through the park’s eastern sides. We stopped along the way to walk a quick track, cross a couple suspension bridges and see the Blue Pools:

© 2016. Blue Pools in Mount Aspiring National Park in the Wanaka region of New Zealand. Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

© 2016. Blue Pools in Mount Aspiring National Park in the Wanaka region of New Zealand. Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

Fun fact about this southwestern part of the South Island: If you stand still for longer than a moment, you will get swarmed by sandflies, which are gnat-sized flying insects that bite. The sandfly hordes were particularly bad when we were on the Blue Pools track, especially near the water, to the point that I worried I’d trapped a couple sandflies in my camera body after I changed lenses.

Onwards down Highway 6, there’s Lake Wanaka and its stunning views.

© 2016. View over Lake Wanaka in the Otago region of New Zealand. Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

© 2016. “That Wanaka Tree,” a willow tree in Lake Wanaka in the Otago region of New Zealand. Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

That’s an Instagram-famous tree, by the way.

We checked into our Queenstown hotel pretty late, so we explored the historic gold-mining town Arrowton and Queenstown the next morning. Queenstown was by far the single most touristy place we visited, as it’s basically a huge resort town with seasonal adventure activities like bungee-jumping, paragliding, kayaking, skiing, mountain biking and more. It was nice to walk around the shops, but it felt good to depart for a quick northbound detour to Glenorchy before going to Te Anau for the night.

The Glenorchy-Queenstown Road is more of a “journey, not the destination” experience, and we lucked out with some gorgeous weather on our scenic drive.

© 2016. Glenorchy-Queenstown Road in the Otago region of New Zealand. Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

For the first half of this trip, I was obsessed with ferns. For the second half, I was obsessed with lupins.

© 2016. Glenorchy-Queenstown Road in the Otago region of New Zealand. Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

© 2016. Glenorchy-Queenstown Road in the Otago region of New Zealand. Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

© 2016. Glenorchy-Queenstown Road in the Otago region of New Zealand. Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

© 2016. Glenorchy-Queenstown Road in the Otago region of New Zealand. Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

© 2016. Glenorchy-Queenstown Road in the Otago region of New Zealand. Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. Ektar +2, Pentax 6×7.

Glenorchy is a super teeny town, and we fortunately found the one gas station before it closed at 5 p.m. After filling up our tank, we returned down the same road and then on to Te Anau, where we’d spend the next two nights.

A selection of these photos can be purchased as prints at prints.christhedunn.com.