Saturday 21st November Fiordland National Park We were startled to find that it was already 9am when we awoke today. Must have been something to do with yesterday's trek! It was slightly unnerving to suddenly be aware of lying with our feet higher than our heads and quite a challenge to sit up, get out of bed and stand up on a sloping floor... We had parked on quite a slope. This produced the novel experience of our washing up water having a deep end and a sh...

Sunday 22nd November Te Anau. The weather forecast fooled us again! Expecting to wake up to steady rain and high winds we were planning a dreary day driving south, windscreen wipers on full. Te-dah! Cur bright blue skies, white fluffy clouds and a light mild breeze. Our 'Great Views Fiordland Holiday Park' lived up to its name, and was excellent in all ways. Fully replenished with clean clothes, fresh water, charged batteries etc we were ready to set off int...

Friday 20th November The Routeburn Track, Glenorchy. It was a turbulent night of wind and rain and we could feel the van being buffeted despite our careful manoeuvring into what we thought would be a sheltered spot. The weather forecast from the DOC sounded grim... heavy rain - up to 3.3cm tomorrow morning - with snow above 700metres and a cold wind giving a predicted wind chill of minus 5. The afternoon looked rather better. We excitedly planned a cosy lie-i...

Thursday 19th November. Travelling south to Otago and Queenstown. Last night's camp site was at Lake Paringa - a DOC campsite one hour's drive south of the glaciers. It was probably very pleasant but as we arrived after dark and left at 7.30am, we didn't have much opportunity to check! There were 2 Good reasons for our early departure. The first was a wish to make the 240km journey south through South Westland and the Haast Pass in good time, in order to r...

Wednesday 18th November The West Coast Glaciers Today started pretty well, hit a low spot mid morning but then got better and better. The camper mate app had waxed lyrical about the beautiful sunrise over the lake - it did look nice when I peeped out from under the blind, and behind our Yukka tree, but not nice enough to get out of bed before six. By 7am the forest orchestra had started up and the sun was really warm so we got up to go running and explore the ...