Fox Glacier, lake matheson and Wanaka

I woke up early this morning so I could have a chat with Alexander Green. This made me very happy for the rest of the day. Matt and I had our porridge and set off down the road to see Fox glacier. This glacier is smaller than Franz Josef and supposedly not as impressive. We parked at the beginning of the walk to it and then trekked up to the view point. This took around half an hour along some flat land and then another fifteen minutes uphill to see the glacier. For some reason I preferred this glacier. I think parts of it were slightly more spectacular although it was smaller. We headed back along the same route and drove fifteen minutes to lake Matheson as the lovely lady at our hostel had told us it was a beautiful place to visit. There was a two hour walk around the lake that we took, taking in the lovely views of the water, trees and the Tasman mountains beyond. Supposedly mount Cook was even visible although I wasn't sure which one it was. I know it sits on the other side of the mountain range because the only way to get to it from where we were was to drive as far as Queenstown and then go north again from there (it might help to look at a map). 

After perusing round the little lake Matheson gift shop we headed on in the car and stopped for lunch at a rather dull place by the side of the road (dull compared to other views we've seen recently). We ate our sandwiches (ham and coleslaw) before starting the journey down south to Wanaka. It took us a few hours but luckily the views were sensational. Driving past mountains and lakes was glorious. Occasionally we get boring bits of road that are straight so we do take it in turns to drive so as not to fall asleep or anything. However, Matt loves to drive on the exciting roads and can keep going whereas I like to sit and just stare at views. We have a good system going on. 

When we finally made it into Wanaka it was nearly 6pm (we'd stopped at lots of view points). For some reason Wanaka was crazily busy with people sat outside of pubs drinking beers or eating ice creams by the lake. It was a Saturday night and later we discovered it was the start of school holidays and the end of the ski season. Unfortunately, this meant we struggled to find a hostel, trying three places until we found one with beds. Once checked in, we headed down to the lake a shared a tub of ice cream, looking out onto the spectacular mountains. Wanaka is a fantastically stunning place. The ice cream flavours were rum and raisin, apricot and malteser. I didn't enjoy the rum and raisin much; I don't think I'm a huge rum fan. I loved the apricot though (it's not the devils work). 

It was dark by the time we got to a supermarket to buy our tea. We went simple tonight and stuck with bolognese. We cheated and added a tomato and red wine pasta sauce to our mince but it did make it taste very yummy. Proper comfort food. We ate it in the little outdoor area of our hostel under the heaters. However, it was still rather cold and we can definitely tell that we're in the south now. As we'd bought an ice cream earlier we thought it best to not spend a load more money on a beer (poor people problems) so we sat in the hostel and watched Friends on the telly while writing blogs. We're not the most exciting 22 year olds.