Off to Wanaka!

Franz Josef to Wanaka Weather: clear, sunny, mid to high 60's

We filled up our car's gas tank prior to leaving Franz Josef (at my request) & heading out to Wananka. On our way we stopped at Lake Moeraki & Munro Beach for a short hike. There's a penguin colony at Munro Beach & I was excited about the possibility of seeing penguins! There's also a seal colony that's withing walking distance from the penguins & I was excited about that too! Unfortunately the penguins were out looking for food & the tide was too high to get to where the seals were! Boo! The only animals we saw on our hike were a couple birds, sandflys that wanted to eat me alive & a dog rock...

Lake Moeraki

Hike to Munro Beach

Dog Rock

Munro Beach

Munro Beach

Penguins friends, where are you?!

Munro Beach

After leaving the beach we saw a popular lookout that seemed promising. Well, we zoomed our camera all the way in on the point of that beach in the picture below & then zoomed in some more & discovered... wait for it... seals! Yes! Seals! Hey, I'll take what I can get at this point!

You're gonna have to trust me on this one, there are seals on that beach!

Continuing our adventure in Haast we stopped at the Fantail Cafe & had our long awaited meal of fish & ships. My fish was the standard Hoki & Peter got the Snapper. We were told we had to eat fish & chips in New Zealand & we finally did! We were sad that it didn't get served to us in traditional newspaper though. Oh, well. You can't win 'em all!

Happy Peter

Once again there were lots of scenic pull offs so that we could pull over & take pictures of our gorgeous surroundings.

Mountains

Lakes

Some of us preferred to nap on the long drive

Pretty scenery makes driving more enjoyable

We finally made it to Wanaka. Apparently this is were the New Zealanders go for their holiday. It reminded me of a resort town in the Adirondacks. We found our hotel, checked in & then headed out to walk on the beach with a short stop at a pretty intense playground.

Lake Wanaka

New Zealanders enjoy crazy spinny things on their playgrounds

More spinning

and more spinning...

Trying to get his equilibrium back

Lake Wanaka

Lake Wanaka

We then headed to a local bar on the lake for happy hour.

Our Jugs of Tui Beer

We couldn't decide where to go for dinner & wound up at a BBQ place of all things. I had a chicken wrap with plantain chips and Peter went for it & got the half a duck meal!

Peter & his half a duck