Day 6

Today was our last day of travelling with Jochen and Susanne. It was also the first time that we had rain on our entire vacation! We had hoped to do a hike first thing in the morning, but the rain postponed that, so instead we had a delicious breakfast in the town of Wanaka, which is north of Queenstown. By the time we had finished breakfast, the rain had started to clear, so we drove off towards the Rob Roy Glacier Hike that we hoped to complete.


We knew that the drive was an hour outside of town, but then learned that 40 minutes of that was on an unpaved road. We decided to take a risk (why not, we'd taken so many already), and test the road. After crossing several fords:

(A ford is a much cheaper form of river-crossing than a bridge but it may become impassable after heavy rain or during flood condition. A ford is therefore normally only suitable today for very minor roads. Most modern fords are shallow enough to be crossed by cars and other wheeled or tracked vehicles - a process known, fittingly, as "fording"), we made it to our destination.
The uphill hike (felt like both ways!) took us a little over three hours, but was well worth it for the views of the glacier that we saw.

We had officially exhausted ourselves with one final hike and filled out tummies with steaks and ice creams before spending the evening relaxing with drinks under the stars, by an outdoor fireplace at Barmuda in Queenstown.