Retirement Trip ......Cut short part 4

The Franz Joseph Glacier - the photographs are in no particular order.  The drive from the overnight lake campsite gave us tantilising glimpses of the glacier and we were excited to be able to see it from quite a distant away. We stopped in town and went to the tourist information office for a coffee and to pick up a walks map.  You can basically do a self guided walk to the final viewing platform, which is a safe distance from the end of the glacier. Its quite shocking how the glacier has receded over time but still a spectacular view.  The walk takes about 2 hours round trip and is reasonably easy going, a few ups and downs but mainly across the glacier floor

We planned to go to the Fox Glacier the following day so got a campsite in preparation.  This was a through the clouds view on the way back from dinner, by the time we went to bed it had really clouded up and the forecast was for rain

This was some really good apple cider, we may have had several of these!!

As expected the rain came during the night and we woke to pouring rain and sullen skies.  We decided to give the glacier a miss and spent the day in and out of rain but an enjoyable scenic drive through sub tropical vegetation and craggy rocks through to bracken covered hillsides and LOTS of lakes.  We called into a salmon farm along the route, where we purchased the first of many samples of smoked salmon, and we ate a fair amount of it over the weeks, so good.

We ended the day in Wanaka a pretty lakeside town.  Good restaurants and a yarn shop, of course it would have been rude not to have bought something wouldn't it? 

So all this time our fridge was still giving us problems, the smell every time you opened it was awful and I had cleaned it out three times.  Various emails bounced back and forth to the camper on the road team and it was decided we would take the van back into the depot in Queenstown, so that where I'll leave it for today. Catch you later