4 Seasons In A Day

We headed up to Franz  Joseph with the determination to conquer an epic Glacier but unfortunately the weather had other ideas! Horizontal rain is an understatement we must have missed the announcement  for a monsoon!! 

So we stopped for a coffee (of course) and made the decision to head on up to Greymouth to avoid anymore bad weather. We spent one night at Greymouth as the hurricane winds set in we retreated to our cabin for cover.

As morning arrived we concluded there was only one place to visit in a hurricane complimented by torrential rain...Greymouth Pier of course!! Lets just say we got another free shower...

Feeling fresh we set off over the notorious Lewis Pass the rain started to ease only to turn into a snow blizzard! Out came all the snow plough's to clear the cliff hanging roads as Nay drove us safely to Hanmer Springs where the natural hot pools awaited! On arriving in Hanmer the weather flipped again to blazing sunshine! Couldn't believe how unpredictable it was over a distance of just 300km's!

(First pictures in the rain taken at about 9am, Lewis Pass snow pictures 

above taken at about 12:30pm and the one below at about 3pm!!)

Today was a chance to chill out after smashing more than 2800km's in the van to date. We basked all day in the natural hot pools at Hanmer. 

The afternoon provided a chance for me and dad to get a quick 18 holes of pitch and putt. Approaching the tee for the 13th hole mum noticed a "strange" cloud over the mountain. The sky was totally vacant and blue with the exception of this rapidly expanding column of white cloud. We weren't sure at all weather there were any volcanoes over the mountain, but it looked exactly how you would imagine an eruption cloud to look. 

Once we finished our round the bloke told us it was smoke from a controlled forest fire, which they have during this season to remove areas of woodland that are particularly vulnerable to bushfires. 

NZ is extreme in many ways - and the weather makes no exception!