South Island Holiday Trek Begins - Lake Rotoiti, Franz Josef Glacier, Blue Pools

This year, for the summer break, we once again decided to spend Dec 22 - Jan 7 in the South Island to finish up our South Island bucket list. Last year (end of 2022), we stayed in the northern half of the South Island. We spent the days before Christmas on the beach in Kaikōura, Christmas and a few days with our friends in Christchurch, then went straight across Arthur’s Pass and up the east coast till we got to Farewell Spit and then on to Abel Tasman National Park. It was amazing and so much fun, but there was still much more to see in the South Island, so we returned a year later.

We left early morning on Saturday the 23rd to catch the ferry from Wellington. Its about a four hour drive, but the kids are pretty good at road trips at this point so we made it with just a quick stop halfway at McDonald’s for some play and nuggets.

If you want to catch the ferry to the South Island for the holiday break, it is always good to book by mid-year. After that the only available spots are few and far between and you often have to go on the very early ferry. We went on both of the Wellington-to-Picton ferry services last year, Interislander and Bluebridge, but went with just Bluebridge this year, mainly because it was cheaper overall.

Waiting for the ferry to start boarding

The kids enjoy the three hour ferry, wandering around the ship and watching the several different options of movies available. Our ship, the MV Strait Feronia, had a big theater room with cozy armchairs and a family room with toys and a big screen TV — this is where we mainly stayed.

The family room in our ferry

Picton

The ship arrived pretty late in the day and we really like Picton so we stayed the first night in the Waikawa Bay Holiday Park. Glad we stayed close because it was pouring buckets as we arrived.

Lake Rotoiti

We set off early the next morning and visited some spots we had explored the previous year on our way to Hokitika. The first one being Lake Rotoiti next to the town of St. Arnaud. In my opinion, one the most beautiful spots in all of New Zealand.

There is a jetty there, and under it there were hundreds of eels, much to the kids’ delight.

Just something about sitting on the edge of this lake that is so captivating.

Buller Gorge Swing Bridge

Next up we hit a spot that the kids were too afraid to do last year, the Buller Gorge Swing Bridge. It is New Zealand’s longest swinging bridge, suspended about 19 meters above the river, and it does swing pretty good! The older two made it 1/3 of the way last year before turning around, but this year we all made it across. I did have to carry the youngest in a hiking backpack. Its $12.50 for adults and $5 for kids but I think worth doing at least once.

Hokitika

We continued on to Hokitika to spend a couple nights. It is a town with a nice beach renowned for its gemstones that you can find most of the time at the mouth of the river to the ocean. It is a source of Pounamu, the green jade stone famous in New Zealand and important to the Māori. Unfortunately we didn’t find any, but it was a nice beach to hang out at!

We also did a 40 min hike with a swing bridge over the Hokitika Gorge. It was a bit wet and rainy, and the water wasn’t the famous blue that day, but still an awesome hike. Make sure you have some sort of bug repellent as there were many sand fleas there, a small biting bug common in the summer in New Zealand.

Franz Josef Glacier

This year we were really hoping to see some of New Zealand’s big glaciers, so our next stop was a night in Franz Josef, the town named after the large glacier outside town. We went to do the hike to the viewing area that only takes about 15 min, but it was quite overcast and you could only see a tip of it. A much better idea is to do a heli-hike or the 8 hour Alex Knob Track (a bit too far for us with all the kids).

Lake Matheson

First thing in the morning we drove south just a bit to Lake Matheson. It is on the west side of Aoraki/Mount Cook and is famous for its reflection of the mountain in the still water. We wanted to grab a picture of both sides as we were going to Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park the next week

Looking at Mount Cook across Lake Matheson

You can do a 1.5 loop around the lake, but since we were in a hurry, we went counter-clockwise to the Reflection Island, about 40 min out and back. They built out a bridge and a platform there for taking pictures of Mt Cook. Definitely worth a quick stop. There were so many Tui birds around as well.

Fantail Falls

There were a few stops that we wanted to make as we headed to Wānaka, heading through Mount Aspiring National Park. The first was Thunder Creek Falls, but… we missed it. We were singing or kids were asking questions, but in any case I missed the quick turn off. We decided to keep going instead of finding a place to turn around and ended up at Fantail Falls just down the road, and I am glad we did.

The pull off area was bigger and nicer, and it was just a quick walk 5 min walk to the falls through a wooded path. It opened up to a large riverbed covered by stacks of rocks placed by people everywhere. Rock stacks on the ground, on surrounding fallen trees, in the water. The youngest was knocking them over left and right, and I had to catch her from pushing over some rather large stones.

Past that was a shallow crossing of Haast river leading up to the waterfall. The older kids immediately started climbing up the boulders and paths along the sides of the falls. You can get pretty high up just following the path, and the younger two wanted to follow as soon as they saw the older kids up top. It was relatively easy to get everyone up and made for a great view.

Can you find us?

Blue Pools

There was bit of a choice to be made at this point. We could continue on to Wānaka where we were staying that night and arriving just in time to visit a really cool, interactive kids museum full of mazes, illusions, and puzzles called Puzzling World before they close. Or we could stop for a longer adventure to swim at the famed Blue Pools Track.

Walking to the pools

We opted for the latter and changed into our swim clothes and lathered on the sunscreen. The hike is a good 1 hour out and back, 30 min to the pools. They have some old swing bridges there that cross over the river in a couple spots to get to the far pools, but they are now closed as they are end-of-life. When we got to the first bridge that was closed we saw a smaller pool just off the river in front of us but there were others crossing the river to our left in a shallow spot. The water was a bit above Leslie and I’s knees but we made it across relatively — easy each holding a young child and holding the hand of the older kids.

We were definitely glad we crossed, because after you climb a little hill of rocks the next pool is there and it was amazing.

The blue color was so vibrant. It is caused by “rock flour”, rocks ground by the moving glacier and then suspended in the river. Different amounts of it cause the water to go from turquoise to dark blue. These were a darker shade of blue than the Hokitika Gorge water and as these are fed from glacier water they are also very cold, which was a bit of struggle for the kids at first.

No one really stayed in the pool for any length of time, it was too cold. The fun part was taking turns jumping in. It drops off from a meter in depth to many meters very quickly, so you don’t have to jump very far from shore to have what feels like nothing underneath you. And the pictures from our Go Pro showed just how clear the water was.

Our oldest daughter made it out a couple times to do a plunge by herself and with Leslie and I, she was so brave.

Unfortunately when crossing back over the river to go home, the current swept my left flip-flop off, and, to our 3 year old’s delight and continual re-telling, it was swept away downstream.

We got back to the car and then to Wānaka tired but feeling good after a full day of adventures.

The drive to Wānaka was beautiful