December 18th
What a difference a day makes, lovely hot and sunny yesterday, this morning it was dull, cold and dismal. Our journey continued to Hanmer Springs and as the morning progressed, the drizzle turned into torrential rain. Not long after turning off the SH7 and onto the SH 7A, both felt the need for a coffee and when a convenient lay-by came up, we pulled into it. Well, so glad we did because below us was the River Waiau and on it a red jet boat! On closer inspection (zoomed in with the camera) it appeared stuck. One guy in the boat and three pushing for all their worth! Check out this video.
Not a bad 30 minutes spent watching, and it made our minds up not to use the Waiau Jet Boats for our thrill adventure!
The rain was relentless. Driving through Lewis Pass with the low cloud hiding the mountains, we were denied in seeing the pass in all its glory.
What a day to arrive in Hanmer Springs! And we did so want to try the hot springs. Okay, rain wouldn't have put us off, no, what did put us off was the amount of mums dads and kids all waiting to go in. Of course, it's the weekend and the school holidays have started, we will find it increasingly difficult to get booked into places unless we plan ahead now.
So a drive through town and a stop at a cafรฉ for a steak and cheese pie, (yummy) before leaving the Springs behind and making our way towards Murchison.
Freedom camping is permitted in quite a few places along State Highway 65, and we found one at Maruia Falls. Rain had stopped but briefly. so we expected the falls to be a sight to behold. Not wrong either but tomorrow may be even better. Thunder and lightening has been rolling around for the past hour which brought with it even heavier rain. I think we may well be in for a noisy night and the dash to the loo was with full wet weather gear, a bit of a B if one is desperate!
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| A short dry spell |
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| There be a storm coming!!! |
That dash to the loo, well I only got a few feet away from the Toy when I saw this.
OMG...from a distance I honestly thought I had seen my first Kiwi in the wild.
But no, it was the more common Weka.
2 comments:
So you didn't stay for the hot pools? There are several pools inside, nice and roomy even with a crowd.
We looked through the i-site window and all we saw were outside pools which were really crowded. Maybe we should have looked into it more. We will do the pools, maybe sometime in the new year.
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