Wanaka To Rob Roy

From Mt. Cook we drove on to beautiful Wanaka, one of our favorite NZ places, situated on the south shore of Lake Wanaka and a gateway to Mt. Aspiring National Park. It is also the gateway to one of our favorite day hikes in the whole wide world, the Rob Roy Glacier Track. We spent the afternoon walking Wanaka town, doing the opp shops and outdoors stores, and the lake shore and then camped at the Lake View Holiday Park. Next morning, we drove the 54km road, paved for more than half the way, to Raspberry Creek and the carpark there that serves the Rob Roy trailhead. More of Wanaka in later posts...

Lake Wanaka on a sunny March afternoon...this from the beach,
right on Ardmore St., the main drag

Ditto; some think of Wanaka as a sort of mini- or proto-Queenstown, 
crowded and touristy, sort of, but without Q-town's hype or 
uppitiness or extreme-everything

Enormous old Willow on the beach

One old art deco residence

The wind-break belying its great age

Now on the road to Raspberry Creek, watching parasails and
waterfalls

Passing a deer ranch

Deer drive

Glaciers and snowfields above feed the hundreds (!)
of waterfalls in this valley

The road's final 10k or so include 6-8 fords; DOC classifies it
as a "fine weather" track; the weather was fine, going in... 

An unsealed, "corrugated" track, as we called them in Namibia

Peaks all around

Camped at Raspberry Creek...the road does
not go ever on from here; but the government
census-takers were on hand to give us and others
the proper forms to complete...the next day was
March 7th, census day in NZ; we happily complied