We spent the morning preparing for our move onwards. I had one last shower, and we made breakfast of beans and scrambled eggs on toast. We also needed to start thinking about booking our ferry from Picton to Wellington- the crossing from the South to the North Island. It was all a tad confusing regarding our Campervan online so we decided to go back to the tourist office before leaving.

As check out was 11am, we walked back into Queenstown to the tourist office. They booked our Ferry for us at 2.15pm on 17th December, we would be leaving the South Island on that date which actually would help us when trying to plan things. It was a good job we booked it when we did as there weren't many fares left for most of the dates around that time as it was Christmas.

After finishing packing up, we were off. We headed straight to the Warehouse store to pick up a cheap new camper table and some Christmas decorations for the Campervan. As mum had already sent loads over in the parcel but unfortunately hadn't reached us yet, we didn't want to get too many, just a few to make it feel a little Christmassy. The parcel mum sent had finally arrived in Oz, so my sister had sent it on to the address of our Air BnB, fingers crossed it arrives on time there!

Our next destination was a small town called Glenorchy. The 45 minute drive there was beautiful yet again, but so different from all the other routes. We arrived 2 hours before our horse riding tour so we decided to have a drive around the town. The drive took all of 5 minutes as it was the smallest town I've ever seen. Again, it was very rustic and had classic country and western style architecture, with a population of 400 people. We drove down to the lake and stopped for a picnic. It was a beautiful town but it only had houses and one shop so we couldn't imagine there was an awful lot to do there. We took some pictures on the wooden jetty that led out onto the lake with the gorgeous mountain ranges in the background. Prior to this, a Chinese family were taking pictures at the end before we got there. As we obviously didn't want anyone else in the pictures, we waited for them to finish. We waited and waited and waited while each one of them took 30 or 40 photos in different positions. If one 'invented' a pose the others hadn't thought of, they wanted to go through it all again and get every pose they could...and I thought I was bad! I waited patiently but Matt couldn't cope. He was openly huffing and puffing as I tried to give him evils to be quiet, he's very much a one photo kind of guy! Eventually we got our turn only for them to return for more and photobomb ours!

We drove down the road to the adorable rustic office where we signed in for our 2 hour horse ride. The guys running it were super friendly! They kitted us up and we waited for the others in our group to arrive. Once ready, they drove us 15 minutes into the mountains where the stables were kept. As I had taken horse riding lessons in my early teens, they considered me to be the most experienced rider in the group of 10 of us... which was worrying as I haven't ridden properly for years. I felt really nervous! They put myself on a horse called Zef and Matt on Harry- They were both beautiful brown horses. We were positioned at the front and they told the group not to let the horses move positions as they had a hierarchy amongst themselves. If the wrong two horses ended up next to each other, they could kick off!

The 2 hour ride past the mountains that were used for filming the Misty Mountains in Lord of the Rings, was just stunning. We walked most of the journey while Kirtsy the group leader gave a commentary about the history of the area and also the many movies filmed there. It was fascinating! We did a little bit of trotting too but the ground was very stoney, so we're weren't able to canter. This tour was definitely one of my travelling highlights so far, I'd recommend it to anyone.

After the tour and back at the Campervan, we made our way back to Queenstown which we had the pass in order to get to our next destination, Te Anu. We refuelled and grabbed a quick snack in Queenstown before setting off on our 2 and a half hour journey. We stopped half way right by the lake edge while it was still light to make some dinner from the camper kitchen. We made vegetable pasta on our little single stove which took a while but was worth it!

Matt had been tampering with the idea of freedom camping as he was convinced we'd get away with it if we hid in by trees somewhere which he was probably right about, but I didn't want to risk the 250 dollar fine just yet so we agreed on a DOC site. On arriving at Henry Creek DOC site at 11pm for the night, I jumped out of the car to use the toilet which smelt like a whale had died inside it, only to get back in and find 20 mosquitos inside the camper with us. Whether they flew in while I quickly opened the door or they got in on my clothes I'll never know but it was crazy how quick they acted! My feet and legs had already been eaten alive by sand flies (which is itchy as hell), I was NOT going to stand for these mossy's too! One by one we killed them off, and with mosquito corpses splattered on the ceiling above us, we called it a night ready for our 6.30 start the next morning!