Lake Matheson

We left Franz Josef and headed south towards Wanaka across the mountainous route of Haas pass. On the way south we stopped at Lake Matheson, a half an hour drive south of Franz Josef. If the lake was still and the sky clear you could see amazing reflections of the south island alps, mount cook and mount tasman in the lake. We were lucky on our visit and were able to catch the reflection, though by the time we had walked around the lake the wind had picked up and the reflection had completely disappeared. The snow capped mountains made a fantastic contrast to the dark rocky mountains of the higher alps, the dark green vegetated lower hills and the bright blue of the sky. As we were in the area we decided to drive to a viewpoint where you could see Fox glacier, a smaller but no less pretty glacier than Franz Josef.
 
To break up our long drive Stuart and I also decided to stop at Hunt Beach, to take a stroll along the black sand, driftwood-strewn beach. We were the only people on the beach apart from a man fishing and his dog. It was a brief but blustery stop and with sandy feet we jumped back into the camper to continue onwards. We next stopped briefly at Haas for some lunch before tackling Haas pass. There were some nice viewpoints and stops along the pass, such as Thunder Creek falls and Fantail falls were we took a short stroll to see some waterfalls and some very blue glacier water. At fantail falls people had erected small cairns of stones. When we arrived there were hundreds of cairns scattered across the riverbank under the falls making a very nice but unusual scene.
 

The last part of the journey into Wanaka was fantastic as we drove along the lakes banks with the sun shining and barely a cloud in the sky. We ended our journey in a campsite in Wanaka.