The plan for the day was to walk the Rob Roy Glacier Valley Walk in the Matukituki Valley of an estimated 3-4 hours. We stopped to do some grocery shopping at Wanaka, and when that was taken care of, we set out to find the beginning of the track. We had read about the track up front, but completely missed the fact that there was 45 minutes of gravel road out there.

After the initial 10 minutes of gravel, everyone was ready to turn the car around and go back – the road was a total pest. I persuaded the rest of the family to continue, and we decided to endure the rattling and bumping to get to the track. I wasn’t all that popular.

On the way, we were stopped by sheep, cows, and slightly worrying waterholes that we needed to go through. We were just about to give up due to one of them when we had only a shorter distance left, but the driver of another car convinced Mads that it would be ok – “That’s character building, maaan…”. Ok then – on we went.

Well arrived at the car park that marked the beginning of the track, we realized we had forgotten to buy lunch, so we had an extra round of breakfast before we packed our backpacks and left Børge BumleBus.

The track followed the Matukituki river at the beginning, then we crossed a swingbridge, and walked through beech forest for a while. Every now and then we would get a peak at the mountains and the glacier through holes in the green cover. The track was gorgeous!

We had a few minor injuries on the way up – both kids stumbled and needed a bit of treatment and comforting, but we agreed to go all the way to the upper look-out, and I am SO glad we did. Amazing view of the glacier, the mountains, a waterfall – such a beautiful hike!

Back in the motorhome, we once again hit the gravel road to go back to Wanaka. It was worth it.