Monday, 28 May

A beautiful, fine, clear morning. We head along highway 63 and pass where Kelley-Anne lives. She’s at work but I waved to Smokey and Mac in front of her house.

Wairau valley has lots of vineyards and is very flat! It was quite nice to get into some hilly country further along as we made our way to lake Rotoiti. 

I had to get a photo of the Hillersden sign. The farm we lived on is also Hillersden.

It’s a gorgeous lake with nice bush tracks. It was pretty cold though! We had an early lunch and fed the friendly ducks before going for a bit of a walk around the lake.

We loved all the Tui’s who seemed to be following us, but I think there was just a lot of them. It started to drizzle rain as we headed back to the ute but there was a gorgeous rainbow which I had to try to take photos of.

Then we drove off and found our way to Lake Rotoroa. It was raining and very cold there so we took a couple of photos and decided to check out the highlights of Murchison.

 We found a motel owner with a great sense of humour and the Hampden Hotel which has a great friendly atmostphere and make enormous dinners! Tomorrow, we will  see some more of the sights of Murchison, the motel owner made the mistake of telling Charlie about a great little second hand shop ;-)