We awoke to see the mountain view looking all moody and gorgeous with the white fluffy clouds rolling across. It was a cold morning. After brekky we hit the road twisting our way south through some rainforest, lots of farm land and sometimes very close to the Tasman Sea. We stopped along the way at Ship Creek Beach. By now the sun was beating down and it was lovely and warm. The sand here was white and strewn with pebbles and a most beautiful collection of washed up and weathered timber. After this we continued south to a little place called Haast. From here the road went inland following the Haast River and to the Haast Pass which rises to 562 metres above sea level as it winds it's way through the Southern Alps. The road wound it's way past beech forest, thundering rapids and some great views of the snowy peaks. The road is only open at the moment between 8am and 6pm as there is a section that was swept away by a land slide a few weeks ago following a prolonged period of rain and they are working on repairing it. When we got to this section men in hi-viz were busily working away and we had to wait a short while to get through as the road was single file across the damaged area. Once over the pass the road straightened out a little bit as we headed down the side of Lake Wanaka. The drivers had been the usual aggressive bunch today and predictably we arrived in Wanaka with a load of wanaka's up our ****! We drove into the centre of town and parked up by the lake. Wanaka is a lovely little town situated at the southern end of the lake and surrounded by mountains. It was not looking at it's best though today as it was cloudy but the view still wasn't too bad. After a mooch around the shops we went to find the camp site we had chosen for tonight. It was on a hill just a short drive out of the town centre. It was an okay place and we got a nice enough spot but the only problem was being surrounded by Europeans particularly when later on we heard a spooky and eerie world war 2 style air raid siren going off. This didn't appear to be a very good place to be with Germans all around us. We looked cautiously outside but luckily all was calm! We later found out from Google that there was no need to panic. Wanaka has a volunteer fire service and so when firefighters are needed the siren sounds and the volunteers know to muster to the fire station. All was quiet whilst we chilled for the rest of the day.