A warm bed and hot pools - Hanmer Springs

After five days camping, we were ready for a soft bed - indoors, and away from kea birds, sandflies, and rain.  The drive out of the West coast took us over Lewis Pass.  It was a gorgeous drive and so typical of the South Island  - curvy and scenic, bordering a crystal blue river most of the way with steep hillsides and lots of sheep on either side of the road.  A stunner. I don't think we will ever get tired of how beautiful those unusually blue rivers are!  Jen was really learning how to best use the camera on this trip and got this really nice panorama.

Our destination was the little town of Hanmer Springs, which is famous for its “alpine” hot springs.  The town looked remarkably like our home town of Evergreen in that a beautiful river ran through it, and it was surrounded on all sides by mountains.  Also it was blessedly hot and dry with a temperature in the high 70s and low humidity that dried all of our wet clothes.  But…alpine is stretching it a bit, since the town sits just 300 meters above sea level, and we weren’t exactly huffing and puffing on our way from the car to the coffee shop.

The main feature in town is the hot springs thermal pools.  We had a nice dinner and then went out to the pools and really enjoyed it - there were water slides and a “toilet bowl plunge” (pretty sure the ride had a much nicer name than that, but that is what we will remember it as since you swirled around and around a funnel into you plopped down a drain and into the final tube for the finale.  Also there were tons of pools at various temperatures, from luke warm to the hot sulfur pools that were HOT, smelly, and had the unfortunate effect of temporarily discoloring Kendra’s favorite ring (it returned to its natural color days later.)  

Here is one shot of the girls after they descended from the "toilet bowl plunge." Heh.

What a nice break from the road that night was! Well rested from a first solid night sleep in some time, we set our sights on the Pacific Ocean and the coastal town of Kaikoura for our last two nights on the South Island.