I left Te Anau in the morning of Saturday the 19th of January, intending to drive the Southern Scenic route, ending up in Duneden. The sign of this route intrigued me so I turned my camper van South and wondered what lay ahead.

The sign that intrigued me	Initially the scenery was beautiful	And we had some interesting encounters on the way

But then the scenery disappeared and I was bored and disappointed. I turned back North when I reached state route 6 just north of Invercargill. I drove back to Queenstown where I spent the night. I had thought about doing whitewater rafting in Queenstown, but after finding out that its cost was over $125 (USD) for only a half-day excursion, I decided to scrap that idea. Besides, my left leg was hurting from an injury so I thought it was best to give it another day of rest. Not that whitewater rafting would have been that demanding on legs, but that, combined with the cost, made me nix it.

After spending the night in Queenstown, on Sunday the 20th I found myself heading towards Mount Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand. I opted to take a scenic route through i-forgot-its-name pass which took me to Wanaka. Simon and I had plans to climb in Wanaka a week or so later.

I stopped in Wanaka just long enough to buy a new CF card for my camera -- just in case the camera problems were the fault of the memory card. (I'll report on the results later). At left is one of the less serious memory errors I was experiencing (notice the blank area on the bottom). There were many photos I took that were totally unusable; i.e., when I tried to download the photos onto my laptop, the system refused to do so claiming that the image was corrupted and uncopyable.

Anyway, After leaving Wanaka the scenery turned back to gorgeous, like the photo at right. Say, why don't we look at the rest of the photos of my Mt Cook trip as an album?

Click
here
for the slide show.

I mentioned previously that my left foot was sore and swollen a bit. This was a couple of days ago. The photos on the right show the situation.

One lane bridge	On the way from Queenstown to Mount Cook I encountered scenery that reminded me of California.

Upon leaving Mt Cook National Park I stopped to take pictures of this wonderful place in the late afternoon/evening sun.

 
Hey look what I found! Honey Mustard chips -- with wine yet!