Wanaka and Queenstown

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Still heading south, past Fox glacier and Lake Matheson, famous for it's mirror reflections of the mountains on a clear day - it was cloudy when we got there though, so no sign of Aoraki/Mount Cook (NZs highest peak). We drove down the coast for a while before turning inland and following the Haast River up to the Haast Pass and onto Wanaka. The scenery just takes your breath away, and the further I venture into South Island the more amazing it seems to get. I'm already planning the return trip, we passed by so many beautiful places without having time to stop.
Wanaka is a small town at the southern tip of Lake Wanaka, and a great place to relax for a couple of days - I spent my time just walking around the lake and in the hills nearby. Impatient to catch up with the friends I'd made on the bus from Nelson to Franz Josef, who hadn't stopped in Wanaka, I jumped on the bus to Queenstown - a 45 minute journey, but a million miles from the laid back calm of Wanaka - it's full of people throwing themselves out of planes or doing impossibly high bungy jumps, and then partying the night away in the bars. Starting to feel just a little bit old at this point :-) But it's still a beautiful spot, with the Remarkables (great name for a mountain range!) rising up from the shores of Lake Wakatipu. I hired a car with a friend and we drove up to Glenorchy, and on into the Rees Valley where we hiked up to an abandoned gold mine. It's pure Lord of the Rings landscape up here, and the kind of scenery that I'd always pictured in my mind when I thought about New Zealand. Awesome :-)

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Photos

Wanaka
View of Wanaka from Mount Iron

Lake Wakatipu
driving to Glenorchy

Invincible Goldmine
at the start of our hike up to the abandoned mine