On the road: North annd westwards

Reluctantly, we leave Queenstown and head up and across the Southern Alps to the Other Side. As we left, the weather man said that yesterday was the hottest day in the last two years and the second hottest since 1999 (33 degrees-ish). We drove north through Wanaka, weaving in and out of the roads beside Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea. I could ramble on about the scenery but you probably get the idea . . .

As we cut through the Haast Pass (named after Julius Haast, a famous European geologist - I bet you didn't know that!) and made our way down to some serious greenery we saw our first clouds. Hmm, a change in climate perhaps . . . Not knowing how long this leg of the journey was to take, we pre-booked a motel in Haast Junction rather than try to drive straight to the glaciers in one hop. As it turned out, we got to Haast Junction by 2 in the afternoon and, as it looked as if our latest place of rest was more of a loose collection of settlements rather than a normal town, we decided to throw the cases in the room and drive on. Turn left at the Tasman Sea and straight on for 50 kms to Jacksons Bay. And I do mean straight on, and on, and on. To the right of us was supposed to be the ocean but we were surrounded by trees; it was like driving down a never-ending veridian tunnel. Probably one of the most tedious journeys yet, if you don't count the eagle-like creature that flapped out in front of us from a roadside bush. There wasn't much to see at the end of the drive (some explorers arrived there in the 18th century, failed to build a jetty and left three years later). We took a 40 minute walk through a trail in the rain forest to a cove where there weren't any breeding penguins. I let Linda drive back.