Arrowtown is a cute little town that was a big during the New Zealand gold rush of the 1850s to 1880s and has done nothing since but we still liked it. One road pretty much covers the whole town but each building seems to come straight out of an US town in the deep south, think Gone with the Wind meets any old Western and you won't be far wrong. I think probably the main thing we did here was get our first taste of New Zealand lamb in a pub which served massive roast dinners for $15 and showed the cricket which for me is all you can ask of a pub.

We also went around the Chinese gold miners abandoned village and did a pretty poor (as NZ goes) walk down the river.

The drive to Wannaka was pretty harrowing one for Rhiannon who still hadn't gotten completely over her fear that I was likely to drive off a cliff at any moment. It involved driving over New Zealand's highest main road at well over 1000m of slow windy roads in the rain with vertical drops down the cliff on the passenger side keeping Rhiannon looking nervous. I thought it was great and I like to think that by the end of it she realised that she was in safe hands with me at the wheel and since then she has been relaxation personified in the van.

Wannaka is another nice town that I really liked, set next to a huge lake which in the town included the brilliantly named "Roy Bay" which incidentally isn't the only bit of Royness in the area which also includes Mt Roy and the Rob Roy walk. The latter of which we tried to do but were forced to turn back when it turned out the road to it was very much unsealed and fear of chipping the windscreen which felt realistic as chips pinged off it, made us have a re-think. Shame as it encompasses waterfalls, lakes and mountain views and would have been pretty special.

Not much else of note happened except it was probably the sunniest and warmest day we'd had in the country thus far and was the last sunny day we had for about a week as it turned out.