Wanaka to Okuru (Haast/Jackson Bay)  

Our journey today took us from Wanaka, along the shore of Lake Hawea, across the northern end of Lake Wanaka then through Mount Aspiring National Park, through Haast and on to Okuru where we will stay the night.  The driving instructions were, again, simple: drive for 149km, turn left. 

Jackson Bay is at the bottom left, Fox Glacier is by the 6 at the top right

It was a cloudy day for most of the way, so fewer photos than usual were taken.  A feature of the national park seems to be waterfalls. This is the Fantail falls:

A feature here seems to be the piles of stones which were all over the beach when we arrived. We saw people coming onto the beach and adding more piles. 

The stones themselves are interesting

There were plenty of flat stones around, so John had fun and success skimming them, much to the amusement of a young Chinese boy. Here you can see the splash and the stone. 

At one point, John stopped to take a photo, turned round to come back to the car and only than noticed that he had parked right next to another waterfall

As we reached the northern end of the national park, we began to see some chinks in the cloud and by the time we reached Haast, much of the cloud had disappeared. We were now at the confluence of the Haast and Landsborough rivers, the wind is blowing and whipping up dust in the river valley.

We knew that there were not many hotels in this area, or indeed many people, but we had read that it was worth visiting and our taxi driver (also a tour guide) of the previous evening had confirmed this. We headed for our accommodation. The roads were empty for much of the time. 

We arrived early, so we left our bags and, following our land lady's advice, we drove down to Jackson Bay for a lunch of freshly caught crayfish. Jackson Bay is a very small fishing port with one small cafe.  On the map, it doesn't look far, but it is 37km from our accommodation, so not exactly round the corner. It is also at the end of metalled roads.

Just before we reached the turning to Jackson Bay, we found this WOW! view from a single track bridge crossing a river estuary. Fortunately, there was a narrow walkway that we could leap on to if a car was crossing. 

Jackson Bay from the cafe

The cray fish (under a red umbrella)

After the lunch, we went for a walk through a forest down to Lake Ellery and back. 

John has been fascinated by these kidney ferns and finally took a good photo (the with the iPhone, of course) but with no rain for a long time the kidney ferns were curling up from lack of moisture.

Other photos in the forest, another fern that we had not seen before 

While there had been a lack of rain there was still no lack of water in the streams

Lake Ellery at the end of our walk

We returned to Collyer House where our landlady asked if we would like her to provide a 'platter'. This saved us a long drive and so we gratefully accepted. We sat out on the terrace and enjoyed the lovely views with the Tasman Sea in the distance. 

This was the sunset across the sea to Jackson Point.

It was a clear night and so at last John was able to get a good photo of the stars. This is the Milky Way with the Large and Small Magellan clouds visible on the right and the Southern Cross at the bottom of the Milky Way.