Queenstown - day 40 - 15th February 2008

We are now at Queenstown waiting for the weather to improve so that we can have a flight down to Milford Sound. The flight has already been bounced twice at 8am and 10am and now waiting for confirmation for a 2pm slot.

Since the ferry crossing to the South Island on Monday 11th Feb have visited the following:

# Picton - lovely little port and marina, had a good walk around and meal in The Barn restaurant which is full of memorabilia from 1920 to 1970, most of which we could remember! This included a great collection of 60 & 70 45's which we played all night. Dave unable to dive due to poor weather prediction so we moved on and will be back later.

# Lake Rotoiti - on the way to stop at Greymouth we had a stop and spoke to this woman who was feeding the ducks, swans and long fin eels (enormous fresh water ones)and she suggested that we stop at Hokitika, 30k down the road as there was a site right next to the beach.

# Hokitika - Shining Star Beachfront, super location next to the Tasam Sea where we looked for jade. Had a meal in the van and then went on beach to see the sunset, fantastic.

# Franz Josef - stopped at the Top Ten site and had a great hot tub. Booked a helicopter flight over the glacier for the Thursday morning but it rained all night and they said it would not clear until Sunday! So we cut our losses and moved on in the rain towards Queenstown.

# Lake Hawea - on the journey to Queenstown the weather improved to glorious sunshine and we again saw the convoy of old Vauxhall cars we first saw in Picton.

# Queenstown - arrived to overcast evening and booked the Milford flight and had our first Indian meal.

Sorry to all but I have some great pictures to add but system is so slow will add at a later date.

Stop Press News - received a text message and email today with a photo of the "ROCK" Tammy and Mark have got engaged. Congratulations to you both. XXX