4. Hamner Springs

We went up to Hamner springs on a short day-trip. It's a couple of hours drive through pleasant and varied country. The most interesting part of the drive is as it gets closer to Hamner, and the terrain becomes more mountainous.

Road to Hamner

Hamner Springs itself is a small tourist, focussed on the hot springs located there. I don't really get the attraction of the hot springs though, and from what I can see it is just about having a hot bath, that's been geothermally heated. I guess that's all nice and environmentally-friendly and all, but not enough to convince me to want to take a bath in the middle of the day.

Hamner Springs

Hamner Springs

As in many parts of New Zealand, there is the ever-present excitement activities in the tourist areas. In the case of Hamner, you can go on jet-boat rides on the river, or a number of other ways of getting excited that I don't recall. In some ways, I don't really get this angle to the South Island. You can do that sort of thing anywhere, so why does it end up coupled so much with the dramatic natural scenery of NZ?

Hamner Springs Excitement HQ

4.1. Lewis Pass

After taking a look at Hamner, we continued East up through Lewis pass. The road is winding, and the scenery through there is good, although not really as dramatic as the more Southern Arthur's pass. With some good time management through the day, it would be possible to make it out to the west coast and back across Arthur's pass in one day, but for us there wasn't the time, and instead back-tracked into Christchurch again.

River near Hamner

White Cliffs, Lewis Pass

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