Hobbitses, Crepes and Whitebait

So, during our drink in Queenstown two nights before – come on, keep up – we bumped into a couple of locals who asked if we were planning to go to Glenorchy because it would so familiar to us from the Lord Of The Rings. They claimed it was only 40 minutes up the road. (Oh, this is a Kiwi trait that we have grown to recognise – the ability to grossly underestimate the length and duration of journeys – this one was actually an hour and a half). I was sure we had already stumbled upon a possible location for Hobbitses …

but we thought it might be fun to find some more.

Glenorchy was Isengard in the film

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but the whole area looked so familiar, even more so the next day when we set out north through the Pisa Range bound for Fox’s Glacier.

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The whole journey was spectacular, right through the middle of the Southern Alps, past lakes, down steep valleys and over the Haast Pass, a road that wasn’t even built until the 1960’s the land was so challenging and unstable.

In the heart of the mountains is the beautiful settlement of Wanaka right at the head of Lake Wanaka. It is an idyllic setting and the most charming little town made all the better by the caravan opposite the cinema selling freshly-made crepes.

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We reached the coast again at Haast, turning north and as we passed Bruce Bay there was a small, hand-written sign for “fresh whitebait” with an arrow pointing down a rough track by a river. Well, we couldn’t resist could we?

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For those of you in Europe, forget everything you ever thought you knew about whitebait. In New Zealand “baiting” is an obsession, a tradition passed down from generation to generation. In New Zealand the whitebait are the tiny spry of five different varieties of fresh water fish that make their way each year from the sea back up the rivers where they were spawned or so I was told. They arrive back en masse each autumn and in September it is the baiting fest. Families have held territories on river banks for decades, each child sworn to secrecy. We know all this from Wendy’s new best friend who was fourth generation and who ran the little shack called Kiwiana Kai. They are cooked in a “patty” basically an egg omelette and they are delicious especially doused in a sweet mint sauce.

Replenished and refreshed we continued our journey, heading ever north to the land of the glaciers.