Day 44 – Franz Josef to Wanaka.

It was an early start for yet another long day of driving. We had to be on the bus for 7.30am so we had time for plenty of stops and whatnot along the way. Our first stop was at the beautiful Lake Matheson. Unfortunately the weather was a little cloudy so the views weren’t as reflective as they could have been but you could imagine how amazing it looked on a good day. We grabbed a cup of tea and a small breakfast from the café before making our way on one of the walks to see the lake, well to the first viewing platform anyway as it would take hours to walk the whole way around it.

Back on the bus we played another one of Gary’s little games. This time around it was the Weetabix challenge, this was to see who could eat a whole one in the quickest time without having a drink. I generally eat cereal dry anyway so I probably would have been quite good at it if I didn’t have a broken tooth on one side. We had a brief stop at Ship Creek to see if we could spot any dolphins but unfortunately we didn’t.

Next stop was Thunder Creek Falls, which is a 96-metre waterfall, located in the Mount Aspiring National Park. It’s amazing just to drive around this place and see so much beautiful scenery. 

We then had another brief picture stop in Lake Hawea lookout, the water was so blue but the winds were crazy!

After check in we actually had quite a few hours to check out what Wanaka had to offer. So Kirsty, Adam and I went on a little walk around the lake, dipped my feet in the water and just walked around the little town. All these places are just so beautiful. We went into New World as we had decided to make a group meal. Our obvious option was curry and we even treated ourselves to some garlic bread pitta things… they didn’t have any Naans, their naans looked like tortilla wraps which made no sense to us so we went for the next best and closest thing. Dinner was a success and we managed to cook the right amount and not have any left over.

We went down to the bar that evening as they had a game on called Bus Wars, this was because a Kiwi Experience bus and a Stray bus turned up that day so they play games against each other to see who is the better bus, obviously we were. We played Musical chairs, dance off and other things and Kiwi won them all! Terrible dancing and some karaoke then topped off the night.