Wanaka and Mount Cook

January 30th - February 3rd

Stayed at a great campsite overlooking Lake Outlet which was beautiful. We went a bit crazy and decided to climb mount Rob Roy on our first full day and it turned out to be higher than Ben Nevis!

We managed it in 4.5 hours return which wasn't a bad effort and the views of Wanaka were spectacular - well worth a few blisters, but was bloody steep! Didn't hang around too long at the top as it was really cold and windy.

Drove to Mount Cook the next day - our last stop in New Zealand. Stopped a few times along the way to take some photos of Mount Cook itself and the Tasman Glacier.

We got there early so decided to go for a walk and get a few more photos which was just as well as the weather massively turned after a couple of hours and was very rainy and windy. The campervan practically blew over a few times so we moved it so it wasn't side on to the wind - pretty hairy at times. The views the next day were totally shrouded in cloud so we felt a bit smug that we'd seen most of everything the day before.

Dropped the van off back in Christchurch (no damage so I laughed in the face of the bloke who tried to pressure us into windscreen insurance) and then took a flight to Auckland ready for our trip to Canada the next day.

Stayed at some strange Triad airport hotel the night before which was pretty manky, but departed OK on our 21 hour trip to Vancouver via Hong Kong.