Today’s post is two days of travel. Why? Because literally everything we wanted to do was cancelled due to unseasonal snow fall in the Fiordland region so we drove most of the two days.
We parked and camped next to the lake Friday which meant our day yesterday (Saturday) started with being greeted by a few Mallards outside our door trying to take shelter from the wind. Caleb wanted to get close to them and Aidan wanted to feed them, shhhhh. (The videos won’t load 😡 )
Once we got up and on the road we headed south. We stopped at a gold mining place to check out the canyon it was gorgeous.
We continued our drive through a wintry mix of snow and rain and found an oasis in the form of a cafe with llamas, horse, and sheep out back. They also had delicious Chai Lattes served at the perfect temperature. I’m not talking face melting hot but the perfect warm your soul temperature but the roof of your mounts and tastebuds are left intact to enjoy the melt in your mouth Raspberry &White Chocolate muffin, that isn’t overtly sweet.
Waiting when we came out was a beautiful low slung rainbow to cheer us on as we continued our journey further south.
We made it to our stop for the night and hooked up the campervan to power and took a walk into town to grab some food, gloves, and check out the scenery. Fiordland National Park and Lake Te Anau are gorgeous. Even covered with clouds and rain. One word, breathtaking. We saw all sorts of birds along the walk my favorite was this big pidgeon it’s not an ugly, kamikaze pigeon like we have in Okinawa, but a beautifully colored, serene bird.
After dinner we just chilled, did laundry, and then slept.
Sunday we planned to visit some filming locations for Lord of the Rings but only made it to one due to all the snow that fell and was still falling as we were driving.
We did make it to the filming location of the Dead Marshes. That was pretty cool to see. It runs through a sheep and deer (yes deer, deer are livestock in this beautiful country) farm and is very serene.
After this it got really bad and we just pressed on to Queenstown to have a nice few days stay. But more about that tomorrow. In the mean time check out this beautiful image we took along the Southern Scenic Route. I can only imagine what this all looks like in summer and real spring not weird snowy spring. 
Wandering a Lighted Path 