Thursday 2nd August

After breakfast it was a short ride down the road to Lake Matheson which gives some great reflections of Mt Tasman and Mt Cook (Aoraki)

From here we drove to Wanaka passing some great scenery and Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka on the way. Once in Wanaka we visited Puzzleworld to walk around the largest maze in NZ. We spent 1 hour walking around the maze and must have walked about 2 miles trying to get out

Wanaka was fully booked up due to the skiing but we found a gem of a lodge for $60 which was superb so spent the night there.

Friday 3rd August (5 days to my birthday!!!)

We drove via the Kawarau River and Gorge on our way to Te Anau passing through Queenstown. We believe this is where they shot a lot of the scenes for Lord of the Rings as it looked very Middle Earth!!!! Mel thought she saw Gollum then realised she was looking in the mirror at me!!!!

We passed Lake Wakatipu which is the second biggest glacial lake in NZ and Maori legend has it that it was formed by the imprint of a sleeping demon burnt to death by the lover of a beautiful Maori girl captured by the demon because his heart did not perish it still beats and the lake rises and drops 3 inches every 5 minutes!!!!

We arrived at Lake Te Anau which is the largest glacial lake in NZ which we had a walk around before booking our trip tomorrow for Milford Sound which we are really looking forward to. Hopefully we will get a chance to see dolphins and Fjordland Penguins.

Kia Ora

M & M