Thunder, Lightening, very very.... welcome!! Humidity back to normal. A fresh start in Queenstown and due to the rain we decided to give climbing the Mt Cook tracks a miss today, so relaxed until checkout.

Very short blog day today, we stopped out on route 6 to see the Kawarau bungy bridge. Unfortunately didn't see anyone jump as the river had swelled so much they couldn't launch the boat to recover the jumpers so they were rigging them up to be winched back up to the platform. Was a 45 minute operation apparently. So swiftly back on to SH6 into Cromwell, stopped to get some fresh cherries, an abundance of orchards in this area. After that we went onto the SH8 around Lake Dunstan, a long skinny lake. This road lead us passed Omarama and Twizel. Stopped for lunch here but had a very strange feel to it so we moved swiftly on.

Stopped at Lake Pukaki at the lookout point for Mt Cook. The road from that lake to Tekepo is supposed to have the best views of the Southern Alps and the Glaciers ... on a clear day... But yup you guessed it, Mr Rain and cloud meant no view at all. So we had a sleep!

The road to Tekepo was nice enough even without the view and we got here in good time. We are staying in a little cabin in the holiday and motel park. It's quite quaint and basic, have to provide your own bedding. Dumped our stuff and took a drive around Tekepo.

Drove up a long gravel track called Lilybank road to the the top of the lake in the hope of getting a clearer view of the mountains, but alas this was not to be. We stopped at the Church of the good Shepherd where on a clear day you can see Mt Cook out of the altar window! There's always tomorrow?

We also went to some hot pools, underneath Mt John, where we intend to climb tomorrow. Relaxed for ages in the three different temperature pools.

Before we were able to cook dinner we had to get a kitchen kit from reception, which we had to go to twice as $10 deposit was required. After scrambling the utensils we needed, cooked a basic pasta dish and opened a lovely bottle of wine which we had to share with one cup. Sunset over the lake made up for the bad weather all day, prompting another trip to the church to watch the changing colours on the lake... Tekepo, all is forgiven - almost! A nice view of Mt Cook would be great... thanks.

Also, the southern cross, my favourite constellation, is right outside our window! :-)

Sunny morning, good view of the snow capped mountains... Drove back to Lake Pukaki for the view but Mt Cook still hiding!