After yesterday's walking tracks, today's road journey is taking us further into the southern alps, through places such as Pleasant Flat, and the Gates of Haast - sort of a natural river flow control passed the town of... Haast of course, made up essentially of fallen rocks of the surrounding mounts. Just catching sight of the top of lake Wanaka, very impressive as we drive around it's east side, whilst cloudy there's still a very distinctive reflection of the s...

FJ (Franz Josef Glacier) is a little town located along the West Coast, who's big feature as you could have guessed is that it has a large glacier, and snow topped hills, even in the height of summer. But with that comes a lot of mist and low clouds... We made the most of some pretty good walking tracks through the hills / forrests once we'd settled in, the first being up and up ending at a miner's tunnel. Needless to say, the tunnel was very cold and wet with a...

Hills and water today - a long drive across the south alps all the way to Greymouth (which sits at the mouth of the Grey River!!!). This now puts us on the West coast - weather still hot, though the hotel pool was freezing so settled for a dip in the bubbly hot tub instead. On the way here, a slight detour took us to a place known as the Pancake Rocks - you best look it up for the full geological history, quite interesting - the sea effectively made them over t...

Today was return of the campervan, and ferry trip down to the south island. Nice smooth crossing on a large ship, a lot of it surrounded by nice green hills! On arrival in the small port/ town of Picton, hire car collected and on the road again - to another port / seaside town, Nelson, which is on the western coast. We are staying in Monaco (!!) - which is the name of one of the town's districts. Lovely sunset over te sea between palm trees!!!

Cold evening last night! Dropped all the way to 15deg, plus chilly wind... We are certainly noticing sudden changes in one day! Today is for exploring and sightseeing around Wellington - the sun is back out, no doubt it will turn out to be a very hot day again!