Well done weather.. I knew you could do it!

So, massive apologies for not keeping this up to date, I am terrible, but it's been so busy and I haven't had very much internet access, that this is the first opportunity to catch up.. so, happy new year and here are my monster updates..

Thursday 22 December

A pretty early morning and the bus leaves at 7.15am, which is a bit of a bind, but hey, it means we get to our destination at a reasonable hour of the day. We head out for a walk around Lake Matheson to get a good view of Mount Cook, but the weather wasn't so great this morning, but the walk was good, so and I appreciated it because I meant I could nurse my poorly legs that got a complete battering yesterday.

After an overpriced bagel, we began our journey to Wanaka. We stayed at Knight's Point, which was the joing point when the road was built from the north and south. Lunch was consumed in Haast, which has the gates of Haast, special because as you go through, the direction of the river flow changes (interesting fact, and true because I saw it!). Then we got to Lake Wanaka, which is stunning, there were no particular photo stops along this stretch, but we managed to get a few shots through the window, like a proper tourist would!

Today has been pretty fantastic for weather and it was set to continue throughout Christmas, which pleased me no end. We checked into a lovely YHA on arrival and Vicky went off to do a skydive - the rest of us popped to the supermarket - Now, I have to stop here because I feel like I have spent most of my holiday in a supermarket and we've got it down to a fine art now because we know what we want and also the random places that you find these items in NZ.

After a lovely dinner, the four of us walked to the local cinema and watched Drive, which not only was a pretty good film (obviously enhanced with Ryan Gosling action), but the cinema itself was pretty special, with only around 50 seats, all chairs were either sofas, train seats, bus seats, plane seats.. there was a car to sit in (which Alex took advantage of) and the whole cinema experience was pretty special. To be honest, we were only in Wanaka for one night, and I could have easily stayed there longer.