Wanaka - Franz Joseph

It is hard on the driver, but there is something deeply plesant about driving through rugged mountains. We took a break at lunchtime to find the river that the road was following. It was a glacier river, with the teltale teal water. Alison was warm enough and crazy enough to go off to a private pool, strip to her skivvies, and plunge it. It was worth it, though it took hours to warm up again! Joplin headed off for a hike. McKinley tried her hand at rock-climbing the face of the waterfall, a good 150' cliff that would have been a tad more comfortable with ropes. Kind of like when she climbed Seward in the Adks, but with more skill and agility now.

The Tasman Sea is the large body of water between Australia and New Zealand and is a south-western segment of the South Pacific Ocean. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, discoverer of New Zealand and Tasmania. The British explorer Captain James Cook later extensively explored the Tasman Sea in the 1770s as part of his first voyage of discovery. (wikipedia)
The mountains dive down to the coast, and by afternoon, we were at the edge of the Tasman Sea. The Tasman Sea! Next to the grand, sedate Pacific on the other side, this was a roaring fierce water, whose waves ripped into the sand. Joplin and McKinely wanted a photo of their feet in the sea. Then Alison went out to the edge to get a picture of the mountains rising behind, and a great wave came up and splashed her to her waist. She had to fight its pull just to get back on the beach! The sky was cerulean, the sea was turquoise, the mountains grazed the sky..