Well New Zealand has been hit with a big storm that’s going to last about 24 hours. The first we knew of this was the torrential rain and winds on our first night in the motorhome. Fearing the worst for the day we didn’t rush getting ready to leave the site.

Just after 9.30 we drove into town to find the stone painter and we said hello to him from Ros and Andy. The rain had now ceased so we headed as originally planned to Hokitika Gorge to do a walk there.  Unfortunately because of the amount of rain, the river was all churned up so not it’s beautiful blue colour but nevertheless still wonderful. We did though find some blue mushrooms on route! 

We began our journey to Fox, first stopping on the edge of Lake Ross where we decided to have a spot of lunch as the sun was now out. There was a beautiful Chinese memorial garden to the Chinese goldminers here. We then decided to take Mabel to the beach for a quick look at the ocean before finding an old disused rail bridge. 

Time was getting away so we headed straight to Franz Joseph Township, we now had hailstones and heard a tornado had hit just 90km up the road. By the time we stopped though the rain had ceased and we managed to do a walk taking in the Franz Josef Glacier (from a distance, you can only get on it by helicopter these days) and Peters reflection Pool. 

More hailstones as we continued to Fox and then with the sun coming out we saw a huge rainbow. We quickly decided to do a walk at Lake Matheson (a famous reflection pool) but our luck had run out as about 2 mins before we reached it the rain came back. 

We decided to call it a night and headed to the campsite, where Dave knocked up eggs, beans and bacon for dinner, washed down with a beer of course.

New Zealand is living up to it’s reputation of all 4 seasons in a day, hoping tomorrow is a bit more settled.

Total distance today 253km (157 miles).