Leaving Dunedin we decided to head towards Wanaka and make our way to Fox glacier and meet up with Catlin and Jen to do the glacier hike, but that meant a long journey was ahead. As we wanted to get to Wanaka before sunset we decided to take a lil shortcut from the highway one to highway 8. We saw this small road in the map that connected both which meant that we didn't have to go all the way round and thought this may save us a little time. So off we went, off the main highway 1 towards Berwick Forest. We drove around the south perimeter of it fine, a little snow and a lot of gravel roads but seemed okay. As we head up the west perimeter we turned left onto another small forest road, which headed in the direction of the motorway we needed to be on, which turned out to be quite a mistake. Travelling down it a short 5 ish minutes we turned around a corner to a down hill slope and realised there was a barrier at the bottom of it but when we were about half way down. The barrier seemed locked so we had to go back however the icy conditions and the rear wheel drive meant this would be pretty difficult, actually impossible. Wheel spinning in the same area, burning the rubber on our tyres, planting rocks beneath the wheels, nothing helped. Intact at this point we'd slowly drifted further down the hill and were resting on the barrier itself. There was no way of getting back up the hill and we were miles away from anywhere. Couldn't even remember a farm or house or anything kinda civilisation we passed for a long time. As the sun began to set, and after contemplating trying to crash through the barrier with Percy, we decided to sleep it out and sort it out in the morning. Minus 10 degrees and a downhill slope combined to give us probably the worse sleep we'd ever had. As the sun rose so did we, layered up ready for a mission of a walk to find help. Off we walked, through the forest, past empty farms, sheep, highland cows to where we finally found a farm. The waking farmer didn't seem impressed but as we entered his grubby house and asked to use his phone to call the AA his humanitarian side appeared and he offered to get his tractor and tow us out, or at least thats what we thought he said. He was quite tough to understand, like that guy from waterboy. Phew! Driving to his farm, grabbing his dad and a tractor off we went and yanked Percy up the hill. In exchange he asked for a lift to a near town which was the least we could do for the man and also threw in some fags we found too. Promising to stick to the highways off we drove. Passing Laurence, a town with free wifi which we thought was pretty amazing, stopping in Alexandra for lunch which was a picturesque small town, to Wanaka just before sun set, only 24 hours later than we planned. Watching the sun set over behind the mountains overlooking the most beautiful lake we'd probably seen was one of our highlights. A small town, one I preferred to over Queenstown with a first glance was somewhere we would have liked to spend a little more time however the girls were doing the hike tomorrow morning and we wanted to follow. Unaware of this we decided we should let them know what we are doing. As we called them they LITERALLY around the corner and so we caught up of our activities over the past few days over some food and beverage, swindled the Fox reservations so we could all hoke together, and headed to Fox to see what that's all about. Driving up to the west coast through the mountains and along the coast in convoy we finally made it there about 5 hours later, parked up on the side of the road and camped out in our vans under the amazing starry night.