New Zealand - Lake Matheson & Wanaka

Day 29 - Monday, February 20

We left Franz Joseph and headed down the coast a short way to Lake Matheson, one of New Zealand's many "black water" mirror lakes. The water is more like a brownish color but it doesn't let much light in, and thus reflects the mountains and such around it. In any case, we were lucky to have the clouds clear for a few minutes while we were there and I got a little camera happy for a bit. Here's a few photos from the lake:

From New Zealand - Lake Matheson & Wanaka

From New Zealand - Lake Matheson & Wanaka

Then we left the coastline and headed up over the mountains to Wanaka, which oddly enough is located on Lake Wanaka. We stopped on the way in to get a few photos of the lake:

From New Zealand - Lake Matheson & Wanaka

We got in about mid-afternoon, and I relaxed the rest of the day. The town is quite nice and I think I may have stayed an extra day or two, but I didn't want to leave all the folks on my bus that I'd gotten to know pretty well. That night we did some karaoke, and by that I mean other people sang and I watched and provided moral support.

Day 30 - Tuesday, February 21
The next morning it was drizzling. We had the option to hike Mt. Iron on the way out of town, and I wasn't going to let a little rain stop me.  A photos of Lake Wanaka, the town, and the cloudy skyline from the top of Mt. Iron, which is really more of a hill than a mountain:

From New Zealand - Lake Matheson & Wanaka

After that we headed on into Queenstown, the so-called adventure capital of the world, where I was planning to spend at least a week. The standard KEX stop is 4 nights, but I had some extra time before I had to leave and most of the folks I talked to in Fiji said they really enjoyed their time in Queenstown and would've spent more time there if they had time to spare.