Monday 25th March It is still drizzling on and off this morning so we took a walk around Queenstown - a real adventure paradise, weather permitting of course. Before lunch we decide to drive to Glenorchy about 45km away and walk around the lagoon for a couple of hours, there's a jet boat ride on offer but we would rather wait for a clear spell and tackle the Shotover River Jet Boat experience, claimed to be the worlds best. The weather pitches up real nice in...

The sand flies have taken their toll overnight and both Lyn and I have several ankle bites, itchy but not sore. We drive out of Haast, named after Julius von Haas the great Dutch explorer and after whom besides the town, there is als the Gates of Haast, the Haast Pass, the Haast this and the Haast that - he was also a concert violinist and wrote the first geology text for the Westland in the 1860's. Haast leads us to several massive glacier formed lakes, one of...