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We woke up this morning to temperamental skies and occasional gusty winds.

We slept well in the shelter of blue wave while the blustery, angry storm passed through. While it doesn’t seem like it rained much, the wind howled all night long.

It started spitting on and off as we ate breakfast and watched rowers on the lake far below us. We also wondered what the drive up and over the pass would be like. We’ve heard it’s really pretty and that we should take our time, so we’re hoping for good weather.

Eventually we rolled out of camp around 1030am. We were only 5km from town and our first stop was the supermarket – if you can call it that.

Most of the small towns have markets called Four Square Supermarkets. They are small markets that offer what most people need but lack the variety and quality of foods we like.

They did have really good artisan bakery bread so we bought a loaf, along with bananas and headed out in search of the post office to buy stamps for the post cards the kids have been working on.

Andy spotted trash cans so he ran back to the camper to get the trash that’s been collecting since we haven’t had many opportunities to throw it out.

We’ve learned it’s better to have multiple little bags of trash compared to larger bags because the larger bags don’t fit in this country’s small rubbish bins.

Laurie and the kids went to the playground while Andy went to go dump and fill. There we met 2 boys with familiar american accents (it is still weird to think that we have accents to people here). They were 8 and 10 and had spent the past 3 years sailing from Florida to New Zealand.

After playing at the park for about 30 minutes, Laurie and the kids went searching for dada. They found him as he was finishing up dumping the contents of the cassette toilet.

Finally done with our town chores it was time to drive over the pass. But before we drove outta town, Laurie wondered if we should go to the medical center in town and consult the doctor about Ani’s chin.

We both agreed it was a good idea to go since we were still a day away from Queenstown.

We were assured by the nurse that steri strips were the way to go and if we can keep them on Ani’s face for 7 – 10 days that would be ideal.

Feeling reassured, we finally began driving out of town. It was now 3pm. The partly sunny skies and little wind filled us with hopes for a pleasant and scenic drive up and over the pass.

The road wove past more fields of purple, pink and white lupine lining the creeks and hillsides.

Ani slept as Miles and Laurie stopped to spread some more of Sue’s ashes. They had to climb down a rock wall to reach the riverbed but once there they were surrounded by a large patch of lupine. Miles scattered flower pedals and Laurie poured out the remainder of the ashes we had brought on this trip.

The drive up and over Lindis pass was incredibly picturesque. We didn’t stop to take pictures but instead took in the alpine scenery with our eyes.

We turned off the main road and backtracked on a dirt road for about 20 minutes to camp. Miles took out his camera to snap some pictures of the cows and sheep we passed along the way.

The kids enjoyed running around the old hotel ruins with Andy and playing in the lupine while Laurie took a power nap.

We then switched so Andy could cook. But the activities with Laurie were short lived as the wind died down and the sand flies came out. Having retreated to the van, we all stayed inside the rest of the night.