Southern Scenic Route

A day of differences today.  We left Te Anau at 9:15am - it rained a lot last night, and there was a fresh covering of snow on the tops.

Our first stop was Manapouri where we walked down to the shore and watched some boats crossing the lake which we think were en route to Doubtful Sound.

The main blip was taken somewhere after we drove away from the lake towards Clifden, I liked the contrast of the trees against the snow.

We then stopped at Clifden Suspension Bridge, the first bridge that was built to cross the Waiau River.  It was obviously influenced by the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, perhaps by someone with a rather vague grasp of spelling! See the extra photo.

We then took a slight detour to a photographic location at Lake Hauroko, little realising that we'd be driving 20km down an unsealed road.  We took some long exposure pictures here - see the extra.

We had lunch in Tuatapere, home of the person who invented the Southern Scenic road route, and then drove on to McCracken's Rest.  This was a viewpoint over a wild sea, but wasn't particularly photogenic.  Gemstone Beach was our next stop, but again we didn't stay long.

Cosy Nook was lovely.  It was a small cove with some very ramshackle buildings and a great set of rocks for the waves to crash against.  It definitely reminded us of the Great Ocean Road in Australia.

We then drove on to Howell's Point in Riverton where we had great fun taking photos of the patterns in the sand, see extra.  There was some signs here warning that the cove was in a tsunami warning area, and instructing us to get to high ground if the sea began behaving oddly.  It was a large bay that appeared to funnel the waves into a particular point.

Next we checked into our hotel, and visited a local (and very new) Italian Restaurant for dinner before driving out to Bluff to watch the sunset.  Well we tried - the sun had set by the time we got there, although we did get some great views from the viewpoint.