Longtime followers of our travels will know that we love a good via ferrata, and as it happens the only one currently operating in New Zealand is located near Wanaka. WildWire is the company offering this experience, and their route has been dubbed the “Lord of the Rungs”. It follows the path of a fairly substantial stream as it tumbles down a steep cliff face, where it has carved out a rocky ravine into all sorts of interesting shapes. You can see the stream behind us in the opening picture, although the scale isn’t completely apparent at this distance, as you’ll see in some of the close-up photos below.

If you’re just joining us, via ferrata roughly means “iron path”, and was originally developed during the first world war as a way of getting troops through steep mountainous regions without needing to train them in climbing techniques. Today, it has been rediscovered as a recreational opportunity, and allows people like us to climb in beautiful places that would otherwise require much more skill and probably younger bodies to boot. Besides rungs and other holds fastened directly into the rock face for climbing, it uses steel cables to ensure that slipping at the wrong moment doesn’t result in a fatal plunge. For safety, we are clipped into the cable or other anchor points by at least two connections at all times. Ironically, this means that we spend most of our time moving carabiners from one cable to the next, even though ideally if all goes well they are just a precaution that will never actually be used. In fact, none of the people in our group ever slipped off — although we did sometimes hang from the safety harness on purpose, just for the fun of it!

Including the hike back down, climbing the via ferrata took five and a half hours, so we still had some time in the afternoon. What’s a good follow-up activity to a waterfall climb? How about a lavender farm, that sounds like fun! The grounds were peaceful and fragrant, and we sampled a variety of lavender-infused foods at their gift shop and cafe.

Our final act of the day was the 140 km drive northeast to our next lodging in Twizel. This took us through brown rolling hills dotted with lupine blooms in a range of shades from almost white to dark indigo. Built in the 1960’s, Twizel was once intended as a temporary town to house workers building nearby hydroelectric facilities. It was slated to be bulldozed when they were finished twenty years later, but apparently the locals had become attached to living there and successfully lobbied to keep it standing. The town itself doesn’t get much respect in either of the guidebooks we have read, but so far we have found it to be very pleasant. Our Airbnb is an entire vacation house with all the amenities we might need (a washer AND a dryer, for example), and the business district is home to a number of restaurants that looked interesting. We settled on Mint Folk & Co. for dinner, where we shared a platter of grilled greens and these crispy chicken bao buns — mmm!