So this one was a really early start yaaaaawnnn hitting the road at 7.25 for our next stop at Wanaka where Jessica & I had decided to get off while the rest of our fellow magic people were continuing to Queenstown. Needless to say after my little excursion up the Glacier, my legs were feeling a little tender but on the whole I was feeling fantastic :-)
The weather was unfortunately absolutely crap which was to be expected as this part of the world has rain for 70% of the year which means that one should be grateful for any sun that one gets to see & that one should just expect rain. They don't even bother recording rain in mm, they go straight onto the metres given that Franz Josef gets between 6 & 8 metres a year which in rain terms is A LOT of rain.
So we stopped off (in the rain) at Arnotts Point & Knights Point for some stunning views of the West coast before continuing on to the Thunder Creek Falls to take a short walk to look at the waterfall before hopping off the bus to check out the river a little further up the road. Needless to say I got a little wet as I was still waterproof jacket less so it was just my fleece which is not bad really but the jacket with a hood does a much better job.
First impression of Wanaka is that it is a really sweet little town but we thought that we would leave the proper walk partly around the lake for the next day, choosing to rather check email, stop in at the supermarket for some milk etc etc & get our washing done which of course is such a fun expereince and although the weather had improved it was still not brilliant and realistically the sun always make pictures look so much better.
As luck would have it when we got up the next day after our lie in, in our nice cosy warm beds the weather had indeed improved and the sun was shining so we got up and got going & headed off to enjoy the sunshine and take a walk around the Lake (well a little of it anyway as it is one big Lake and one would need a couple of days to get all the way around it) which was a stunning walk with fresh air, sunshine and the beautiful lake. What a great way to spend the morning. Jessica being madam fitness and all decided she was going up to the look out point to get the aerial view of the lake so I thought that a nice brisk 2 hour walk was enough for me and that she should rather do this on her lonesome. Rumour has it the view was great but I'll take her word for it.
The bus eventually picked up at about 2.30 but we had to hang around for the sky divers where I found Danielle who was travelling a day behind me and had my jacket from the hostel in Nelson. Oh joy oh joy to have that back. So anyway we actually only left Wanaka at about 4/4.30 which meant that the stop at the historical first ever commercial bungy was closed for business which would have been a big bummer had I decided that I wanted to do it for the sake of history but luckily had decided to leave the bungy stuff for next time.
Andy our quite attractive & dare I say tall Kiwi (the norm from what I saw of the Kiwi man was not a whole heap of height) eventually dropped us off at our lovely Lodge looking YHA by the lake at about 7.30 after sorting out our Milford Sound trip whic I might add I was thoroughly looking forward to. What a view we had from the front of the hostel of Lake Wakatipu with the magnificent Remarkables from that Lord of the Rings movie in the background. Wow. Really stunning.
