Fox Glacier - Wanaka
Started the day with a Hike to Fox Glacier. The smaller of the 2 glaciers here in NZ - but you can get closer easier. It's about an hour walk - and it got really hot (didn't help that I carried Keira most of the way).
The view at the end is pretty good for a short walk. Met some Brits on the trail (from Burnley) and they were disappointed - apparently in Europe they are much bigger and you can get right up to them. I bet they aren't as easy to get to though. It's unbelievable how close to the coast we are - apparently these are the closest glaciers to sea in the world on account of the massive amount of rainfall here.
Then a mamoth drive to Wanaka - the kids were really good and did a lot of sleeping. We picked up a 2nd hitch hiker, Simon from Italy - and we are going to try and pick up people whenever we see them. There's a lot of backpackers here doing short hitches between walks I think - we've seen a lot, but often it's not easy for us to stop "The Bus" in time.
Wanaka is pretty nice - a smaller version of Queenstown by looks of it (lots of development happening here too though - so will probably end up the same). We had a truly awful fish and chips from the chinese takeaway (ones we had at Christchurch were awesome, so my Chinese fish and chips theory is now dead and buried). However, the view over the lake was superb so that made up for it a bit. We were pretty annoyed when we saw some other people with lovely looking fish and chips from right across the street where we'd parked though #$^%@$@^!
Ended the day with a lovely sunset from our campground and kids finally off to sleep this side of 11 for a change. Bliss!
The photo for today is looking down on the river at "The Gates of Haast" on the road to Wanaka. Sound like somewhere from the Lord of the Rings - but no, this is a real place!
Anyway, off to the Misty Mountains tomorrow....