Monday January 23
We drove today from Lake Wanaka to Lake Moeraki, stopping for walks several times along the way to see some beautiful landscapes and do a bit of birding. The western shore of the South Island is quite remote, and the roads largely follow ancient Māori trails. It is also an area filled with national parks and conservation areas. The combination of Mt Aspiring, Mt Cook, and Fiordland National Parks and the SW World Heritage total six million acres of protected land. As we drive along the Haast and Landsboro rivers, we were struck by the beautiful blue of the water, a consequence of the mica and schist rocks of the river beds. We drove south along the coast from Haast to eat lunch at a small diner in Jackson’s Bay, featuring “crayfish” or rock lobster. We were entertained at lunch by seagulls… in most cases vying to steal an inattentive diner’s lunch, and in one case a gull who repeatedly dove into the ocean for now apparent reason.
We are staying tonight at the Wilderness Lodge at Lake Moeraki, which was opened in 1989 by Gerry McSweeney. The lodge has its own hydroelectric generation plant, although the current drought is challenging that a little. Dr. McSweeney was instrumental in convincing the New Zealand government that establishing the South West New Zealand World Heritage area and ecotourism was a better answer than converting ancient swamps and forests into dairy farms. While ecotourism has been very successful in providing local employment as well as preserving native species, it is still a fragile concept. During Covid, when tourism dried up, there was pressure to go back to logging “as this ecotourism thing clearly isn’t working “. Fortunately the resurgence of tourism this year has exceeded pre-Covid levels, but it does demonstrate the importance of outside visitors to offset internal skeptics.
Pictured: coastal landscape, dancing gull, blue waters of the Haast River, Tomtit
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