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The next day we dropped Nabil off in Haast as he was on a tighter time scale to us and he caught a bus to Wanaka. We then back tracked a little and headed further down the west coast to Jacksons Bay. A lovely man we met at Titirangi Farm suggested that we go there as the road is beautiful and there was amazing fish and chips and when he was there last he walked to the each and there were penguins! Well he was right on all fronts except for the penguins (they were nesting and were all hiding) the road was stunning. The view from the bay was spectacular as you could look towards the snow capped mountains and sunny coastline. The fish and chips were awesome! We had blue cod and whitebait patties. Although the UK batter well . . . NZ has better fish!
Back on the road we drove back past Haast and down country. We picked up another hitcher called Sam. He was on his way home to Makarora after track building and maintaining for Copland Track. He works for DOC. We were both a bit in awe as he gets to tramp, work outside, explore cool countryside, protect the environment etc for his job! And also gets free passes to all the huts and campsites. It obviously isn't an easy job and its a lot of manual labour but all the same pretty cool. We dropped him off and headed on our way. We mentioned before that the road up the Coramandel was our favourite so far . . . It has been beaten. The road from Haast to Wanaka is AMAZING!!!!!! First you go through mountainous green bush with stunning bright blue glacier rivers and waterfalls. Then it opens up to tussocky moorland mountains (snowcapped) and huge lakes (Lake Wanaka and Hawea) . We were driving with our mouths hanging open, we were blown away. We drove down a gravel track at the top of lake Hawea to a DOC campsite called Kidds Bush (now our favourite campsite so far!) the site was right by the lake looking out to the mountains surrounding it. We went for a walk up towards the Sawyer Burn Hut to get a good view. An hour and a half of STEEP up we reached the top and the views were awesome and well worth the climb. The next day James went for a run and then we both had a swim in the lake. It was cold but so clear! We were torn wether to stay another night or head on but we decided it best to keep going.
We stopped in Wanaka to have a look around. It was a Sunday and they had a cool craft market on the square. We treated ourselves to lunch (mainly because we needed to charge a camera battery!!) we liked the town but civilisation is dangerous for us as we spend too much money!
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