Moving on...

Sun 15th Feb: Another day, more beautiful views to see. The first photo is the view we awoke to this morning of Lake Hawea from our motorhome. A sunny but breezy morning. We drove north
along Lakes Hawea and Wanaka and through a small settlement called Makarora. This was the last house or animal (except for tourists) we would see for another 2 hours of driving! We drove along the Haast Pass which took 100 years to complete, and the road has only been open since 1964. The road was winding and steep in places with huge hills rising sharply next to you, and steep drops down to the river on the other side. The second and third photos were taken at Thunder Falls, just after we had crossed the river on an iron bridge. The waterfall is 28m, and then you can see our three mountain goats clambering over the rocks. By now we had entered the infamous “West Coast” – infamous because of the sandflies that bite you mercilessly. We had some insect repellant from the UK and more recommended in NZ and Steve had thought of doing a trial to see which worked better – spray one arm with one and the other with the other. When it came down to it we smothered ourselves with both. These tiny things appeared silently whizzing up to us, but soon did a U-turn and headed for another tourist so we didn’t get bitten. We continued driving to Haast which is a tiny place where the Pass reaches the coast, and has the longest single-lane bridge in NZ. It started raining somewhere along this part of the journey. This area is rainforest. The density of the trees and undergrowth is amazing, even up the steep sided hills either side of us. This area has 5 METRES of rain a year. I worked out that’s about 1.5cm every day! If you go to 1500m, which much of the area is, then it is 3 times as much. Now you understand why there are no houses and no animals – it is pretty inhospitable. We stopped for lunch in a layby north of Haast. The photo here isn’t marvellous, but shows you the white sand, some rainforest and the huge hills behind. W carried on driving and it carried on raining, all the way to a tiny touristy place called Fox Glacier. Here we spent the night. No beautiful lake, but another playground to show you. One more thing to amuse you. It is against the law in NZ to kill an indigenous species within a National Park. Steve is expecting to be arrested soon for the murder of two sandflies this afternoon.