Day 18 was unfortunately rainy. Consequently, we decided to make it more of an indoor day rather than more hiking and exploration (particularly since we’d already hiked nearby Roy’s peak a couple of days before). After a restful morning, Lydie, Cassie, and I decided to head to Puzzle World, a bizarre museum in Wānaka dating back to the 1970s. (Julie stayed home to get some work done.) Why someone made a museum devoted to puzzles and illusions in the relatively remote town of Wānaka is beyond me, but the museum was fun.

They had a room where gravity didn’t make much sense.

They also had a room that helped us finally figure out which twin was taller (Lydie).

After enjoying the optical illusions, the girls and I spent some time in the museums cafe area, where they had lots of brain-teaser puzzles to figure out. I finished one, and a docent told me I was very smart. Then I got cocky and tried one that had stumped Lydie. I failed, and we all left feeling kinda stupid. But we shared some laughs, so it was clearly a win.

Day 19 was a big travel day. We left the mountainous interior of the South Island and headed toward to the western coast, a region cleverly called the West Coast.

We drove through some spectacular mountain passes. It was raining most of the drive, producing countless waterfalls. When we came down from the mountains, the vegetation was lush, with huge tree ferns lining the road. A little before 4, we reached our cottage in Ōkārito, a tiny town on the shores of the Tasman Sea with a population of just 30. This makes place number 6 for Team Hubbard.

We dropped our stuff and headed down to the nearby beach to check it out.

The beach was beautiful, but not in ways that fit our normal notions of “beach.” The waves were pounding, producing tons of sea foam. The sand was dark gray, contrasting sharply with the white, rounded rocks. There was beautiful driftwood everywhere, but some of it was from tree fern trunks.

Yep. That’s the trunk of a fern Lydie is holding up. We walked down the beach to check out a waterfall spilling from the high cliffs.

As we walked, the sun was setting, offering a lovely sunset over the Tasman Sea.

We headed back to our small cottage, excited to be in a new part of New Zealand.

-Will

Postscript: We ate a simple dinner of pasta and played cards. Around 8:45, we realized that we were in a super remote place with almost no light pollution. The population is apparently 30, and it’s the off season. Half the houses are empty. So, we bundled up and headed to the beach to see what we could see. We were gobsmacked by the volume of stars and the clear path of the Milky Way across the sky. The photos won’t do it justice, but here’s a part of the Milky Way taken with an iPhone.

Apparently, the galactic center is only visible from the southern hemisphere, so these Kiwis get better views of the Milky Way than we do in the northern hemisphere. It was an amazing way to end the night. I’ve never seen more stars, and I’ve never seen the Milky Way so clearly. We came to Ōkārito to be close to the Frans Joseph Glacier, but the way it’s shaping up, the glacier may be a footnote in a better story mostly about Ōkārito.