Have just spent a great evening at the very quirky Cinema Paradiso listening to a band called Beyondsemble. We read about this cinema on someone else's blog. It only has capacity for 60-70 people and instead of normal cinema seats you can choose to sit on a comfy sofa, an old train or airline seat, or even in a cut out Morris Minor. We got a settee in the second row. During the interval they sell freshly baked cookies. You can also order a meal to have in th...

Great weather in Wanaka this morning for our walk up Mount Iron. The iPhone doesn't really do the scenery justice but have put some photos up anyway.

After a couple of wet days we struck lucky with the weather for our walk on Fox Glacier this morning. We got kitted out with sturdy walking boots, crampons and walking poles and spent an interesting couple of hours on the ice. We then headed off to Wanaka, stopping off at 3 places on route to do some walking. The first stop was to Lake Matheson where you can see a reflection of Mount Cook on a good day - but not today. The second stop involved an hour's detour...

Arrived in Franz Josef about lunchtime. After something to eat we headed up to look at the Franz Josef Glacier. It was about a 45 min walk across the moraine field to the viewing point - see photos. We decided to stay in the town of Fox Glacier, ready for our guided walk tomorrow. We heard that there was a 4WD track nearby so thought that we'd try some off-roading again and headed to Gillespie's Beach. The route involved 21 kms of very twisty gravel track - n...

Stopped on the way to Franz Josef to look at the partial eclipse of the sun, using our hastily made pin hole camera. You can just about see it on the photo if you look very carefully. It was only an 80% eclipse so didn't get particularly dark (100% in Australia).