Waking up at the south end of Lake Pukaki was absolutely beautiful! The brilliant teal colour of the water against the light grey, stone shore was so picturesque, with the Southern Alp's snow capped mountain range framing the whole scene in the background. Incidentally, the water is such a vivid teal in the majority of the rivers and lakes here as the water is glacial. This means that the water posses what is called 'rock flour', this is extremely fine - almost silt like - granules of rock that are suspended in the water as a result of glacial erosion and gives the water a bright turquoise or 'milky white' appearance.

On the pebbly shore we got to grips with our single ring stove and made our first cup of tea; sadly, despite Chelsea's constant pacing and checking on the kettle, it didn't boil any quicker. Sipping our tea we felt extremely proud of ourselves and basked in the splendour of the scenery around us - people aren't embellishing when they say how beautiful New Zealand is.

Seeing snow when you're from Wales is nothing new, but when it's covering the 140 peaks of the Aoraki/Mt Cook mountains (one of which is the highest peak in New Zealand) it looks ever so slightly more eye catching.

With Jimi organised and everything now in an allocated space we arrived at Wanaka. It was swamped in sunshine and looked wonderful, with people sunbathing and using paddle boards on the huge lake. The town here was very small but like everywhere in New Zealand was very clean and offered great shops that we browsed for a good hour.

Enjoying a Mocha coffee with Chelsea, we began to ponder a glacial climb and eventually fell into an 'I Site' to collect some information on the subject (I Sites are government funded tourist booking facilities which are free and dotted all over NZ. The staff are always friendly and all guide books and leaflets are free).

After a quiet walk to deliberate the £500 cost we decided to go for it. We had been warned that weather wasn't ideal but that the blue ice looked better when it was overcast. Feeling slightly more pessimistic than Chelsea we began the four and a half hour drive to the Franz Josef glacier.

The drive ended up being six and a half hours and the last two hours were in darkness, resulting in quite a slow pace due to the harshly winding roads and rain soaked surfaces.

We had the pleasure however, of driving along the Haast Pass which runs adjacent to the West Coast and the thundering, white waves of the Pacific Ocean. Incidently, my Grandfather helped built the Haast Pass when he worked over here in his youth. The best place to stop and enjoy the sea would be Jackson Bay where you can scoff a quick ice cream and get your feet onto some sand.

After avoiding a passle of jet black possums that littered the dark roads towards Franz Josef, we finally arrived in the pitch black free camp stop of MacDonald's Recreation Area.