10/8/9 Franz Josef to Wanaka

We left Franz early to visit Lake Mathieson which is a mirror reflection if the wind is still so early morning is a good time to visit. On a good day there is a reflection of Mounts Cook and Tasman and you can get great photos. We walked 20 minutes to the viewing deck and there were a few ripples and some passing ducks slightly spoiling the perfect reflection but it was pretty near perfect. We all got lots of photos of the lake and also some of the mountains. We called into Fox the nearest town to pick up breakfast and snacks for our journey. Cam stopped the bus for us to see Thunder creek Falls a five minute stroll from the highway. The next part of the journey took us inland towards Haast where we crossed the bridge taking us into Mount Aspiring National Park. The scenery was really breathtaking with huge lakes and snow covered peaks towering above on yet another glorious day . The pass is only 563m above sea level and was a busy trading route for the maori . We arrived into the town of Wanaka sitting on the shores of Lake Wanaka in time for lunch so we went for a stroll around to see the lake and bumped into a couple we had met on our Taupo skydive. We chatted to them for a while and then took a quick look at the lake as it was dark and cold went off to do our blog. Unfortunately the internet kept crashing so we gave up and tried to get food but missed the serving time for cheap hostel tea so went for a chinese instead...much better!!! We called our friends from the South America trip who live in Newcastle north of Sydney to arrange to visit them. We have some dates to meet up so are looking forward to that . Once we had made the calls and eaten we joined our Kiwi bus mates in the bar where there was a karaoke. Phil signed us all up to sing Queen's We are the Champions as they didn't have Don't Stop Me Now. We all sang with gusto and got a cheer from the crowd. We went to bed at about 1.30 after watching a few memorable performances.