Around the World in 34 Days

Lou here...... Haven't been able to update you all for a couple of days, but then again, not much to blog about! We headed to Wanaka after Queenstown - very quiet in comparison - no room at the inn tho. Luckily we didn't have to stay in a stable Golly and there wasn't a nice chap called Joe to put us up for the night. Apparently there was a big snowboarding competition on this week. However, we did manage to stay in quite a nice little place - The Bayview - which had a real log fire... Pyromanics are us! They were lucky there was anything left in the place. It was nice to warm ourselves in front of a real fire - it took me a whole 10 seconds between getting thru the door, realising it was colder inside than out, before the fire was blazing. Several trees later we went to bed all toasty. There was a hard frost and the next morning it was freezing again. I put the free paper to good use making 'donkeys' (you would have been proud of me golly). However, Cath was not so pleased... her choice: read the paper or get a fire going.... she read very quickly and I started with the TV section! Once we were packed, we took a quick trip down to town to have a mooch round.

We had a nice breakfast/lunch and had a look in the info shop to book a place in Haast to stay that night. Everywhere once again seemed booked up, but we managed to find somewhere relatively cheap. Once we were booked up it was off to find the council offices to pay our parking fine... $40 for parking pointing in the opposite direction to the flow of traffic in Queenstown.. IT WAS A PARKING SPACE! JJ had managed to park the car rather spectacularly and we were very pleased with ourselves til we saw the ticket! Wont be doing that again in a hurry.

On our way out we went to Puzzleworld - very entertaining taking ridiculous photos some of which you should be able to see below. When I nipped off to the loo I got over excited and insisted the others came and had a look - the roman toilets amused me. Ellie and Jemima would love it here! Played with lots of puzzzles and after a couple of frustrating hours managed to drag ourselves away and continue on our journey to Haast. Well, what can I say - a very winding road thru the mountains to Haast - rather quiet to say the least. It was quite eerie wandering round the place with not another person in sight. We popped down to the beach and took a few pics. Had a nice meal at the hotel down the road tho.. we were the only people in there for a while but it was excellent - porterhouse steak with scallop sauce - delicious. Again there were some of the puzzles from puzzleworld on the table and we sat around after dinner trying to solve them. I managed to complete mine (I don't know how and couldn't do it again I'm sure!) Cath became quite frustrated with the one she was doing and I was not allowed to have a go under any circumstances... we left the puzzle and returned to our room... it was likely that Cath was going to get the saw out to make that last piece fit!

It absolutely lashed it down all night and the rain on the tin roof kept us awake.

Off to Fox Glacier tho early next morning after breakfast down the road in the only place open and serving food for many mnay miles!

JJ here - I successfully drove us to Fox Glacier making sure that I didn't park this time!! The drive was quite nice apart from the rain.... however when we got to Fox Glacier we realised that it wasn't much bigger than Haast... how delighted we all were at this.. We then decided to drive up to see the Glacier, which we did and then walked up to the beginning of it (terminal face apparently is the correct term for it!) You'll be surprised to hear that it was STILL raining, but the Glacier was spectacular. See the photos attached. We then decided that we were all hungry and a little wet so walked back to get some food, yes I did drive back and yes I made sure I had parked on the right side of the road. Once we'd done this we had done about all there was to do in the town, apart from look in a gift shop so we went to check in to the Motel. We got all excited when we booked ourselves on a helicopter tour round the Glaciers and Mount Cook but we were told that it was weather dependent so it might not go ahead.

We woke up this morning to find the weather was gloriously clear, how hopeful we all were, til the rain set in and the clouds! You guessed it, the helicopter ride was cancelled (by the way I hear it's still warm back there!) so we went to have breakfast out by Lake Matheson to drown our sorrows, we did take a walk to see the lake but it was raining still so the mirror effect didn't work! Lou then expertly drove us to Franz Josef - another Glacier town - we shall be leaving soon for Hokitika as it's still raining and there's not much here to do. Apparentley in Hokitika we can design and sculpt our own piece of Jade but we will keep you updated on any more exciting events. Please please check out the photos - Cathy has spent a long time putting them on. Bye bye from Glacier country xx
See the updated Photo Album