This morning was a relatively early start, to be fair though they are all early mornings, just some slightly more so than others, there’s always someone up before you though and always someone up after you, so I guess it evens out!
Today I’m heading down to Wanaka and I’m really looking forward to it, I’ve heard from so many people how lovely it is so I’m really looking forward to seeing what the rest of NZ has to offer as well as hopefully seeing some more sheep! 
Before I headed off on my long drive down south I went back to Lake Matheson to check out the reflections in the morning light, and it was well worth it, just an hours walk around the lake and you’re rewarded with fantastic reflection views of the mountains in the lake.
Now, my impression of NZ, and as told by others, is that it’s full of sheep, more sheep than people apparently and I love sheep, odd I know but there’s something very cute and endearing about them! J Perhaps it’s all those childhood years spent on my cousins farm bottle feeding the lambs when I was a kid, who knows. So far though, I really haven’t seen anywhere near the amount of sheep I was expecting. I was expecting and looking forward to seeing field upon field upon field of fluffy white sheep galloping over the countryside. Instead, so far all I’ve seen is a couple of fields of rather grubby, sad looking sheep. I have seen though, a couple of fields of cows and a couple of fields of deer, I’ve even seen a couple of fields of llamas and alpacas as well as a couple of fields of very large kinda deer like animals, but no more than a couple of fields of dirty white sheep. Where have all the sheep gone in NZ?
It’s a long drive down to Wanaka, around 5 hours, and that would be fine if only I had something to listen to but.........!
So, when I’ve been away before and hired a car (usually in a foreign speaking country and therefore foreign speaking radio!) I always forget to take with me a CD and mentally make a note that the next time I go I wont forget one. The last time I went away was Cyprus in December and we had a hard job finding anything in English on the radio so with this in mind I remembered about taking a CD but thought to myself that as NZ is mostly English speaking I should be ok, right? Wrong! I would have been if they hadn’t put so many mountains and valleys in the way! The very mountains and valleys that I love hiking up and down I might add!
So with this glorious landscape as company my 5 hour journey from Fox to Wanaka was pretty much a silent one, I guess though it did give me time to think to myself (!) and once I got bored of that activity I attempted plugging the ear phones into the laptop and listening to music on there. The only problem there was that I haven’t had enough time to play with the media programme it uses to work out how to play music constantly so it just plays the one song you select and then nothing. So plan B or is that C, D and E (!) was to choose just one song to play over and over. I managed to position the laptop and then the mouse cursor over the play button on the media player so that each time the song came to the end I just needed to click the mouse and it would start again, aha the ingenuity of it all huh?
Well, this worked (kinda) except there were so many places to stop off at on the way, view points and glorious waterfalls that I would get half way through the song and then have to pack it all back up again pop it back into my backpack, get out of the car, see the attraction, take a photo (or many) and get back in the car again. Beautiful vistas and locations, it’s a tough trip huh?! It did mean though that I now know all the words to Lily Allens, The Fear. Great song.
The last 20km of the drive was magnificent, I was beginning to see what everyone was talking about, there was more stopping off for photo opportunities than there was driving time. I arrived at Wanaka around 4pm and instantly loved it, there’s something very magical and beautiful about being on the edge of a huge lake. Wanaka is very fortunate in that it seems to have still retained its local NZ feel despite being on the tourist trail. The hostel I’m staying at is right on the lake’s edge with fantastic views of both the lake and the mountains surrounding it. When I walked in, instead of increasing noise levels that you sometimes get I was greeted by people relaxing and reading books, lovely.
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