Entries about mountains

I woke up this morning to little wind and calm weather, which was nice as it was going to be a busy day and it had been predicted to be rainy. We left at 9, and our first stops were at a couple of viewpoints along the way.

Hawea lake viewpoint

Wanaka lake

Our main stop along the way was at the Blue pools. Thankfully the weather was on our side so we managed to capture the beautiful blue of the pools! The walk was also really pretty (and very busy).

The next stops were all waterfalls, which I still haven't had enough of! The first was Fantail falls, which is just a 5 minute return trip from the main highway!

Thunder creek falls are also just a five minute return walk, which I think it is so amazing that there are so many things to see with such easy access.

The last waterfall was the most impressive and we could hear it a fair bit before we could see it (definitely deserving of the name 'Roaring Billy').
Unfortunately it is also across a river and fairly high up, so doesn't look as impressive in the photo!

We stopped next at Ship Creek beach and it was our first real glimpse of the wild west ocean.

We had planned to stop at another lookout point, but it was so foggy and cloudy at the time, that when we drove up alongside it there wasn't actually anything to see, so we made our way on to Fox Glacier where we would stay the night. We chose Fox as it supposedly has better and quicker access to the glacier and it is close to Lake Matheson which has cool reflections of the mountains on calm mornings. Unfortunately just a few days before we arrived here was a big slip on the glacier access road so it was closed off. Thankfully I have already seen a glacier in Iceland, and we saw some in Aoraki Mount Cook NP too, so it wasn't too much of a disappointment. I had also considered booking a helicopter trip up to the glacier, but the forecast showed lots of cloud and so I decided not to try as it would probably be cancelled anyway.