It felt a bit strange getting up and making breakfast this morning, knowing people were walking by on their way to work. We had the feeling that we shouldn't have been there so we left as soon as we were ready to go at 6:30am! We skipped Invercargill and carried onto a town called Te-Anau, it started to snow heavily as we got into the mountains so Chris had to drive really slowly, the road was completely covered, it looked like a thick white carpet. Sometimes we couldn't even see the road ahead! Suddenly there was a light flashing up on the dash board, it was a warning sign to let us know the brake pads need checking! Bloody great we thought, just what we needed! Well there wasn't anything we could do until we reached town so we had to keep going carefully, especially around the tight corners on the side of the mountains. It ended up taking an extra half hour to get to where we were going and we eventually arrived in Te-Anau at 10:30am. It was a bizarre drive, in some areas the land was covered in thick snow then all of a sudden there was none, like in town, we would never have known it was snowing only a mile away. We parked up and went for a walk around the shops, I bought some waterproof spray for my boots then we went food shopping to restock our fridge and cupboards. We must be eating too much because it never seems to last very long! I really fancied steak for dinner tonight so we bought three sirloins for only $8, the meat is cheap in New Zealand, I guess it's because the whole country is practically farm land, they have so much of it! 

After shopping we went to the information centre to find out about a trip to Milford Sound, it's supposed to be extremley beautiful there so we fancied taking a cruise through it but then we were told the road was closed due to the snow. The pass had been closed for two days due to avalanches and fallen trees on the road and it was likely to still be closed tomorrow, which was when we wanted to go. There wasn't much else to do today so we found a park called Te-Anau Great Lakes Holiday Park and booked the night there. Theres a chance the road could reopen the day after tomorrow so we might decide to stay tomorrow night as well. We were told the next road update would be at 2:30pm so we cooked some lunch and checked then, unfortunately nothing had changed so our chances didn't look great.

We chilled out and spent the rest of the afternoon watching tv, then we ate dinner. Chris under cooked the steaks at first and got frustrated when I told him lol, then he checked them himself and agreed they were perhaps a little too rare! But then he cooked them perfectly and they were delicious! We ate them with minted new potatoes and lots of fresh salad. It was so nice we have decided to dedicate tuesdays as steak night tuesdays and have it once a week. Our bellies were so stuffed we could hardly move so we filled up the hot water bottle and snuggled into bed at 10pm.