Happy New Year!! Where has summer gone?

Oh my ... the first week of 2014 has already gone! It has been an epic epic week here in NZ. Good free/cheap internet has been hard to find, and we have been rather busy.  We have sailed on boats at Queenstown and Milford Sound and walked over a mountain range for 4 days and bogged the motorhome and dug it out and got muddy and wet and dried out. Been having an amazing fun time with my fellow wanderers and Harriet has been trundling along with us every where. But it has rained every single day!!! Summer - where art thou?

This is me, Michelle and Debbie in Wanaka on News Years Day, and yes, it was freezing and windy! Brrrr.

Currently sitting in Te Anau, which is as far south as we are going, in the public library which has the best and fastest free internet so far! There are 20 people in here on there phones and laptops and ipads catching up with facetime and emails and stuff! My other wanderers are buying food for our last few days and we are heading north, out of the mountains to the east coast, searching for summer which seems to have decided to give NZ a miss this year.

While we were in Queenstown, the 101 year old steam ship, Earnslaw took us to Walters Peak Station and back for a sumptuous meal in luxurious surroundings in the middle of a storm.Yes - I know the photo looks calm and the water is a beautiful blue - but it really was blowing a gale out on the lake and raining and the water really is this blue even on a cloudy day. The water is NZ every where is like this. It does not need to reflect blue sky. It looks blue because of silt particles from  glaciers. Amazing.