Lake Matheson, Wanaka and Queenstown!

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After enjoying the day on the mountain at Franz Joseph Glacier, we drove south passing the Fox Glacier. The two glaciers are pretty close together and both are very touristy, if that is a word. Near Fox Glacier is Lake Matheson. Lake Matheson is known for its reflections. The dark color causes very vivid reflections as you can see in the pictures.

The drive down the coast continues to be beautiful with views of the Tasman Sea from up on the road above.

Wanaka is a big ski town in the winter time and a nice relaxed town in the summer. The fact that the weather was warm and sunny when we got there helped make the place a little nicer to relax. I did a hike up Mount Iron to get a good view of Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea as well as the surrounding mountains. Then I met up with a couple of other friends and went to Puzzling World to see the exhibits. There are two areas at Puzzling World. One is the main exhibit area which has several optical illusions. Pretty cool. The other area is a very large maze. The maze is two stories tall and takes about an hour to complete. It was fun running around and trying to find our way, despite the frustrations along the way of going into another dead end.

The drive to Queenstown was scenic as well, but I did not get many more pictures as I could have hundreds of pictures of the beautiful mountains here in New Zealand. A lot of other tourists get all of the pictures, but maybe I have been a little spoiled having lived in Colorado for the last ten years. Still the views are great!

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