Hanmer Springs, according to the guide book, is a popular weekend destination, especially for the city dwellers in Christchurch. It's a quaint, small alpine village that is probably very bustling in the summer. We expected it to be sleepy, however it turns out it's also a huge destination for Queen's Birthday weekend. The weather was beautiful as we pulled into town, which was good because we had to park a bit out of the main drag and walk because there were no parking spots left. The place was buzzing. We decided to grab a quick lunch at a small takeaway place before checking into our hostel. It was extremely busy that day with all the tourists in town and I imagine the staff was a bit overwhelmed with all the crowds. The extremely bitchy rude woman in front of us with three kids probably didn't help, either. But we ate our nice, cheap lunch and went to check in at our backpackers. We've really had great luck so far with the places we've stayed. This hostel was rather quiet, but quaint. It, too, had a log burning fire, a cozy living room with games and puzzles, a nice kitchen, a friendly cat named Janet, and free hot chocolate (on top of the standard tea and coffee)!
After putting our stuff away we headed off to the main selling point of Hanmer Springs--the hot pools. The ones here have been turned into a mini water park, complete with a variety of pools and even two water slides (but those aren't included in the entry--they charge you $10 more--which we didn't pay). They have even added a spa component (which, too, was rather expensive). The entry itself wasn't that bad--$18 for an adult--which is better than I expected. All the cars on the street was telling--the place we PACKED. We thought people would be heading home on that Monday, but it turns out people wanted to make the long weekend last as long as possible. Every pool had tons of people in it, and just as many kids. Luckily, there were three interconnected "Adult Only" pools which we made use of. They also had all natural sulphur pools, which were the hottest but also the most smelly. The third pool we used was a mineral-infused pool that wasn't as smelly as the sulphur. They also had shallow kiddie pools in which I saw two teenagers making out in plain sight of everyone--including the kids. Goodness gracious.
Anyways, we spent a very relaxing two hours at the hot pools before retiring to our hostel for the night. We started one of the Planet Earth 500 piece puzzles that would take us until the next day to complete--but we did! John did most of the work, though, as someone has to take the time to blog about everything :)
The next morning we took advantage of a great deal I saw--50% off for an hour-long horse trek! I had wanted to do a horse trek since we got here, as they are offered all over the place. However, they run from anywhere between $50-$150 per person. This place, with the discount, offered it for $30! It was great weather and a good way to explore Hanmer Springs--so we did it. It was a really great time. We got there a bit early and played with the two sheep dogs they had--who decided to mark their territory by peeing on every new car that arrived in the car park.
There were 6 of us in the group for that morning, the last couple from Auckland was a guy and a girl who was dressed to the nines. Leggins, fancy purple billowy tunic, red pea coat, and knee-high zip-up boots with 2 inch heels. I have no idea why she thought that was a good outfit to wear while riding a horse, but luckily the place had spare socks and boots for her to wear--they also gave her the slow, difficult horse.
The horse I rode was named Whimsey and John's was Ben. Our horses were great and we had no problems. Before you left they taught you the basics on how to sit, hold the reigns, and steer the horse. You didn't really have to steer though, as it was a guided horse trek and the horses just followed the leader at the front.
After putting our stuff away we headed off to the main selling point of Hanmer Springs--the hot pools. The ones here have been turned into a mini water park, complete with a variety of pools and even two water slides (but those aren't included in the entry--they charge you $10 more--which we didn't pay). They have even added a spa component (which, too, was rather expensive). The entry itself wasn't that bad--$18 for an adult--which is better than I expected. All the cars on the street was telling--the place we PACKED. We thought people would be heading home on that Monday, but it turns out people wanted to make the long weekend last as long as possible. Every pool had tons of people in it, and just as many kids. Luckily, there were three interconnected "Adult Only" pools which we made use of. They also had all natural sulphur pools, which were the hottest but also the most smelly. The third pool we used was a mineral-infused pool that wasn't as smelly as the sulphur. They also had shallow kiddie pools in which I saw two teenagers making out in plain sight of everyone--including the kids. Goodness gracious.
Anyways, we spent a very relaxing two hours at the hot pools before retiring to our hostel for the night. We started one of the Planet Earth 500 piece puzzles that would take us until the next day to complete--but we did! John did most of the work, though, as someone has to take the time to blog about everything :)
The next morning we took advantage of a great deal I saw--50% off for an hour-long horse trek! I had wanted to do a horse trek since we got here, as they are offered all over the place. However, they run from anywhere between $50-$150 per person. This place, with the discount, offered it for $30! It was great weather and a good way to explore Hanmer Springs--so we did it. It was a really great time. We got there a bit early and played with the two sheep dogs they had--who decided to mark their territory by peeing on every new car that arrived in the car park.
There were 6 of us in the group for that morning, the last couple from Auckland was a guy and a girl who was dressed to the nines. Leggins, fancy purple billowy tunic, red pea coat, and knee-high zip-up boots with 2 inch heels. I have no idea why she thought that was a good outfit to wear while riding a horse, but luckily the place had spare socks and boots for her to wear--they also gave her the slow, difficult horse.
The horse I rode was named Whimsey and John's was Ben. Our horses were great and we had no problems. Before you left they taught you the basics on how to sit, hold the reigns, and steer the horse. You didn't really have to steer though, as it was a guided horse trek and the horses just followed the leader at the front.
We passed through some really beautiful scenery, including a bit of mud, but my horse would always try to find ways to go around it--I guess she didn't want to get dirty. A horse after my own heart!
We mostly did a slow walk but a few times we got to trot a bit--you had to have had previous experience in order to canter.
But it was still a great time and I was really happy we got to have that experience!
After the horse trek we grabbed some lunch back at the hostel and then headed out for a few walks in the area. The first we did was a short one up a hill called Conical Hill. It wasn't too steep as it zig zagged upwards and so it was a gradual climb. From the top you could see out over all of Hanmer Springs--it was really beautiful.
We tried to take the steeper shortcut down, but ended up on the opposite side of the hill from where we parked the car, and so we had to walk along the streets in order to get back--and ended up taking as much time as following the path down would have taken. Oh well.
The second walk we did was just through some woodland through a park in town. It was all flat and was just a lazy, pleasant way to pass the time. We passed through some Redwood trees and a little pond with ducks where a Mom and little girl were feeding them bread--they were really cute. It was a pleasant afternoon, and soon we headed back to the hostel so John could finish his puzzle (which he did). There were two new people there, a young Dutch couple who were woofing at the hostel for about two weeks. They were really nice and telling us about their travels to Australia and Asia.
It was a very nice stop over in Hanmer Springs, but we were about to leave the guaranteed good weather behind and head to the West Coast!
The second walk we did was just through some woodland through a park in town. It was all flat and was just a lazy, pleasant way to pass the time. We passed through some Redwood trees and a little pond with ducks where a Mom and little girl were feeding them bread--they were really cute. It was a pleasant afternoon, and soon we headed back to the hostel so John could finish his puzzle (which he did). There were two new people there, a young Dutch couple who were woofing at the hostel for about two weeks. They were really nice and telling us about their travels to Australia and Asia.
It was a very nice stop over in Hanmer Springs, but we were about to leave the guaranteed good weather behind and head to the West Coast!
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