Today has been a joy. The drive down to Wanaka is probably one of the most stunning and varied scenery I have ever seen in one short trip.

The weather was overcast and dreary as I left Franz Josef and headed south. I drove through rainforest along some windy roads that just kept surprising with scenery around every bend it felt like at times. One minute you were on a wide glacier valley bed, then around the bend and suddenly up into mist shrouded rainforest, then next a narrow valley, with a rocky rushing mountain stream hurtling past your window, then again out onto a wide flat valley floor full of farms and cattle. The streams here are amazing, even though many are currently dry or very very low. They are very rocky, but flow with wonderful opaque glacial blue water, one minute rushing down furiously fast, the next meandering slowly across valleys and river beds a mile wide. Then I went up & over a hill and round a bend and suddenly I'm on the beach with the sea on my right hand side!?! I go over the next pass and rainforest and the sea has been left behind and I'm in autumnal farmland, and everything is brown and yellow and autumn golds on the trees, with a river winding slowly through the valley bed. Then, I swear this is true, as I was looking at the temperature on the car dash, I went round a corner and suddenly hit lakes Wanaka and Hawea and the temperature went up 6 degrees. I went from a dreary, overcast 15 degrees to an almost clear blue sky and sunny 21 degrees, virtually around a bend. It was glorious.

Took a bit of a pit stop at Lake Hawea, which is very beautiful and very big and then carried onto to Wanaka. Very pleased when I found my hotel and checked in, as it is part of the same group as the one in Punakaiki and is just as impressive. Anybody travelling to the south island of NZ should definitely check out the Williams group hotels. I have a one bedroom apartment, huge bathroom and it's all clean and airy and bright and the bed is dead comfy. As an added bonus, I have my own laundry machines - free laundry and not having to hang out in some smelly, fly infested room to get it done. Listen, if you'd had to pay anything up to £50 to get your laundry done or got bitten to death in some fly blown room for hours at a time, you'd appreciate it as well!! So, I stuck my laundry on (even though I hadn't been planning to do any until Queenstown) and pulled on my cossie and made my way over to the hotel pool and hot spa's, to take advantage of the fabulous weather. Okay, there was a bit of a chilly breeze, but I had the place to myself, apart from the odd sparrow having a bath in the rocky bits poolside and it was a very pleasant way to while away a couple of hours. Booked up my accommodation for the next week at Queenstown and Te Anau, so I'm all set until nearly the end of my trip.

Hotel restaurant is shut on a Monday night, not that I really know what day of the week it is at the moment, so the receptionist recommended the restaurant next door, The LoneStar. Yes, it is a bit American country style, which is not exactly local I know, but quite frankly, I was tired and hungry and the prices looked reasonable. It was good and I actually cleared my plate for the first time in a while, which was great. Came back and updated my blog for a bit, but am going to crash in my very comfy bed, again with something of a lie in. Am off to Queenstown tomorrow, but it is only an hour or so's drive from here, so thankfully am in no rush to get up & get moving.