Day 28 (Franz Josef/Queenstown) - Sunday 16th October 2016

Lake Wakatipu at Queenstown

Warning: stunning scenery alert!

Today, we travelled along the Southern Alps from Franz Josef to Queenstown via the Haast Pass. Our hotel at Queenstown is halfway up a steep hill (mountain??), and I have an amazing view of Lake Wakatipu and the mountains from my hotel room window.

We were left to fend for ourselves for dinner, so I walked down into town and enjoyed a meal at an Irish pub, Pob Mahones. As I left the hotel, our coach driver gave me a thumbs up for walking instead of catching the bus. Quite frankly, I needed the exercise after all the excellent grub I've had on this NZ tour!

The walk took about 20 mins with a few stops along the way for photos. The walk back took about the same time (less stopping for photos) and WAS. A. KILLER! Our tour guy saw me and said I was part mountain goat for making it up the hill/mountain. The photo at the bottom doesn't even show the steepest part! 😁

Lake Wakatipu

🎵 Climb every mountain... 🎵

Day 27 (Christchurch/Arthur's Pass/Franz Josef) - Saturday 15th October 2016

Today, we took the TranzAlpine train over to the west side of the south island. We saw river valleys and spectacular gorges, as well as snow-peaked mountains (the snow was specially ordered in last night for our viewing pleasure today). We disembarked at Arthur's Pass.

Had lunch at the beach in Hokitika (try not to be too jealous, favourite-niece-on-the-other-side-of-the-world, but it was a Subway 😁), and we had a brief visit at the greenstone factory there.

We're now in Franz Josef, and our hotel has been upgraded to a 5* one as the tour operators didn't like the wing we'd been booked into at our original hotel (#NotGonnaComplain 😁).