Travel north Day 1

On Saturday I reluctantly said farewell to Queenstown and headed back north. There are still vast areas of New Zealand that I have not seen, but equally wanted to revisit some of what I had seen where I could stop and take it in which was not possible on the bus! 

I rented a car in Queenstown that I will return in Picton where I started my travels on South Island and I have 4 days to make the trip.

The drive over the Crown Range Road to Wanaka is about 90km and initially it is a twisting road with a steep climb, but excellent views back down the valley to the Queenstown area. For the pilots among us it also shows the challenging approach to the airport using the dominant runway which is RWY23.I will not bore everyone else with this and plan a seperate "aviation" post covering all of that information.
Wanaka is on a lake and is a beautiful setting. Several people mentioned that it was the next Queenstown in terms of potential development. I headed up the road that crosses the lakes into the Siberia valley and on to the Haast Pass and the coast. It was starting to cloud up over the mountains and by the time I got into them it was raining steadily and sometimes there were downpours. Bear in mind that I have basically had two partially rainy days since I left the UK on the second of February, so I am certainly not complaining. Also remember the rainfall numbers previously quoted where 3-5 meters of rain are common and some areas get up to 8 meters (about 25 FEET). 
On the way down in the bus I had noticed a place where the road runs alongside the ocean and there were thousands of little cairns of rocks and sculptures made by visitors with rocks, driftwood and anything else that was handy. Most had some sort of message. I could not remember where it was specifically but it turned out to be Bruce Bay. 

Some of the beauty of this is the knowledge that it is essentially very temporary as the next big storm will probably take some or all of them out. A reminder of the power and awe of nature
I have added a selection of the photos I took in the pouring rain. The one with the Bryan Firestone reference is for my neighbors Arlin and Rose Firestone
Enjoy.

I drove on to Fox Glacier which is only 23 km from Franz Josef and Fox was the glacier we landed on a week or so earlier. The 4 minutes in the helicopter between Fox and Franz was dramatic, but the drive equally so. A rainy evening and an excellent steak accompanied by a glass of good local red wine finished out a great day maybe not in spite of the rain, but because of it. It is such a part of the west coast and the reason for the enormous rain forest