It looks like its going to be another hot one! Today we had to leave Queenstown. We filled up the gas tank, then, because the road out of the gas station was closed, we had to circle twice around a residential area before finding our way back to the highway. It looks like they are going to upgrade to four lanes, but until then it is quite a bottleneck to get in and out of town.
Speaking of gas (petrol) we have seen prices from $2.68 to $3.00 per litre NZ, or about $2.17 to $2.43 CDN. We can't complain about our prices when you see what most of the rest of the world pays.
The climb up out of Wanaka was very steep and curvy, right up into the alpine. It was quite brown and dry up there. Then we came down into Wanaka where there was a regatta on the lake.
We continued on, following Lake Hawea, then back to the northern end of Lake Wanaka.
As we got closer to the west coast and the coastal rain forest, it started clouding over. And then it rained.
We stopped at the Blue Pools and made our lunch, but we didn't walk to the pools due to the number of people, the mosquitoes, and just wanting to get to our destination. This was one of our longer driving days, 352 kilometers, but 5.5 hours due to the slower roads. The photo below does not begin to show the dense jungle-like forest we saw, with walls of ferns. You can tell it's a wet climate by the density of the tree canopy.
We made a brief stop at a rest area, warned by the people in the car next to us of the sandflies. These are about the size of a mosquito but with a thicker body, and they bite! About 20 followed us into the car and we spent the next 1/2 hour killing them.
Our destination was Franz Josef. It's a cute little town, despite the rain and cloud. We stayed in a motel, not a chain but family owned. They were very informative about what to see and where to eat. We went for dinner and had the best healthiest meal in a long time, at a fairly reasonable price. Eating out is expensive, we usually pay $70 - $90 for dinner and a drink or two, but we kept it under $70 tonight.
It stopped raining after dinner and we got a beautiful rainbow.
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