So this is Wanaka and I am sitting in the balcony of my room looking at this view and writing to you.

Today we continued our drive down the west coast from Fox Glacier Town, starting with a stop at Lake Matheson to see Mount Cook and Mount Tasman reflected in the lake. Wasn’t perfect but not bad. We were supposed to walk to the Fox Glacier but couldn’t because there had been a landslide.

After that we went to a salmon farm and to Bruce Bay for lunch and stone piling. Art.

We crossed the Southern Alps via the Haast pass (lot of things named after him around there). Very dramatic with waterfalls, mountains, snow etc.

We also went over a very bouncy bridge to see something called The Blue Pools. Unfortunately, as soon as I got there, every sandfly in the neighbourhood landed on me so I buggered off faster than I had arrived.

An additional point. This is a picture of Lake Hawea, the next one up from where we are now. There is one sheep farm that owns all the land that is not part of a national park. It belongs (as some sort of bolt hole) to one of the founders of Pay Pal. As there is a law proscribing the sale of land to people who are neither citizens or residents, he got citizenship in 6 days flat. Mutter mutter.