We awoke to another sunny day, and the wind had calmed down a little bit.  In front of our room on Lake Wanaka, people were even water skiing, so the lake must have been warmer than I had thought.

After breakfast, we checked out of our motel and headed out Highway 6 for Franz Josef.  Our drive would take us past the Wanaka area lakes and through the Haast Pass to the west coast.  From Haast, we continue following Highway 6 up the coast to Franz Josef.

It’s funny how few roads there are here.  Other than the occasional dirt road heading to some local farms, there’s really only one road through the mountains, and one road up the west coast of the island.  As we were leaving Wanaka, we punched the address of our Franz Josef hotel into the GPS, and it showed our next turn is not for 280 kilometres.  It’s very difficult to get lost here!

Here is Lake Hawea outside of Wanaka.

Here are some more photos from the drive.   We actually took 345 photos today, so selecting a sample to post here was a difficult exercise.

Nadine dipped her feet in the river.  I think it was cold!

We stopped for lunch here.

As we moved closer to the coast, the vegetation got more green.

We eventually arrived in Haast and followed the road up the west coast.

After a long day of driving, we arrived in the village of Franz Josef.  We checked into the motel to get settled.  Our room is very nice with a view of the rainforest out the patio door.  We even have a gas fireplace!

Tomorrow, we’ll visit the Franz Josef glacier.