There are two passes that we could take eastward on our way back to Christchurch (to return the Spaceship). One is apparently so phenomenal that it has its own national park (Arthur’s Pass), but we were more attracted to the idea of soaking our glacier-chilled bones in Hanmer Springs, so we took the other pass. We made it there early in the evening on Tuesday.

On Wednesday we dipped in the springs twice—after breakfast and after dinner. They have a number of thermal pools, most of which are kept between 34-38°C, but I preferred the untreated (basically unchlorinated) “sulphur pools” that were between 40-41°C, and smelled faintly of rotten eggs. Stephanie and I had at least half a dozen itchy welts on our feet from the sandflies in Franz Josef Township, which the hot water pleasantly soothed.

We were considering sticking around the springs for one more day, but we woke up to rain and cloudy skies on Thursday, so we decided on a whim to head to Akaroa, New Zealand’s only French settlement, situated in the crater of a long-extinct volcano, southeast of Christchurch. On the way we stopped for lunch at a cafe/general store called “The Store” in Tai Tapu and had one of the best meals in New Zealand so far: an open-face BLT that required a fork and knife. We walked around Akaroa after we arrived, but eventually parked ourselves at the holiday park to catch up on blogs, email, and to cook dinner.

Friday was our last day in Spaceship Voyager. We had to return it to Christchurch by 4pm. It was drizzling when we woke up, so we hit the road immediately, left our bags at the hotel we’d reserved for the night, dropped off the van, and walked back to the hotel. And thus our two week South Island road trip, three week New Zealand road trip, and first month in New Zealand came to completion.

So what’s next? On Saturday we became backpackers in the literal sense. With only the packs on our backs, we took a bus up to Nelson, in the northwest corner of the South Island, to prepare to tramp the Abel Tasman Coast Track over the next six days, starting on Monday afternoon. Suffice it to say, our blogs will be unusually silent during that time, but fear not, we’re fine.

The weather was going to be iffy midweek, so we hunkered down in Queenstown to ride out the drizzly skies after kayaking Milford Sound. We found some backpacker accommodations Wednesday through Friday to have a little more space to stretch out in than the inside of the Spaceship.

While in town, we had a Fergburger the size of our heads, we tried on all the merino wool clothes that we could find on sale, we hung out in Starbucks updating our blogs, and we started to get very excited about wwoofing in New Zealand and traveling in Africa.

On Friday the clouds parted, so we hiked up to the Skyline complex, an adventure park in the hills surrounding Queenstown. Stephanie had been wanting to go paragliding, but they canceled all their trips due to wind. So instead we did a few rides on the luge, a sort of gravity-powered go-kart—see Stephanie’s post, with video! Then we took the impressively steep gondola back down to town.

By Saturday we were happy to get on the road again. We took a different route back to Wanaka, stopped there for lunch, and continued all the way to the township of Fox Glacier (on the west coast of the South Island), where we planned to spend the next few nights.

Panorama of the Skyline luge and Lake Wakatipu

Lake Hawea reflection on the way to Fox Glacier

On Monday we left Wanaka and continued on our way towards Queenstown (the adventure capital of NZ). We ended up zipping through Queenstown and heading straight for Te Anau to take advantage of the good weather forecast there on Tuesday. That and we knew we’d be coming back to Queenstown later in the week (on our clockwise circuit of the South Island). We stopped at the Top 10 Te Anau holiday park for two nights, and booked a kayaking trip in Milford Sound for the next day.

Panorama from the Crown Range Summit Pass. At 1,076 meters (3,530 feet) above sea level, it’s the highest sealed (paved) road in New Zealand. Queenstown is in the distance on the right.

We could not resist stopping for lunch on the blue Lake Wakatipu

On Sunday we drove from Fairlie to Wanaka, with stops along the way to admire Lake Tekapo and the strikingly turquoise Lake Pukaki. By the time we reached Wanaka, we decided to park ourselves at Aspiring Campervan Park for the night.

Panorama of Lake Tekapo with “supernatural” clouds overhead

Panorama of Lake Pukaki, with Aoraki/Mount Cook on the right

Another panorama of Lake Pukaki

Meet our “new” Spaceship (and home for the next two weeks):

Whereas Palpatine was a brand new “Beta”-model Spaceship with only 46,000 kilometers, Voyager is one of their original (and well-traveled) “Alpha”-models—with 314,000 kilometers! We knew what we were getting, but it did take some adjusting to. Surprisingly it’s actually a little more spacious inside, but the size of the fridge does leave something to be desired.

We treated ourselves to a hotel Friday night in Christchurch, and started heading towards Queenstown on Saturday afternoon. We decided to stop at the Top 10 Holiday Park in Fairlie, which outside of having an impressive herb garden and excellent facilities for such a small location, also had unusually fast and free wireless internet.