I woke up early, before the sun… and man my legs hurt so bad when I got out of bed. I am glad no one seen me hobble around the room like an old man trying to get my pants and shoes on. I bet I looked hilarious. I took some pictures of the sun coming up around the lake, it was so cold out, my hands were shaking so much it made a fuzzy photo so I went back inside to rekindle the fire. I sat in the hut and watched it get brighter out for a while and everyone woke up after a bit. We had some breakfast, packed up and headed back out. The hike back was great as well seemed a lot longer than the way out. The waterfall was nice but not photogenic as there was a big tree sticking out in front, so I didn’t take a picture. When we got back to the road I was really happy. Actually looking forward to a few more hours in the car. We stopped and took a few pictures of the lake, signed out at the visitor center and hit the road.

We talked to Graces brother Ben and decided to head to Christchruch instead of camping at another lake that night. We headed down through Lewis Pass, which was beautiful. I stopped frequently to take pictures but as I was shooting into the sun most of them are crap… Grace had heard of a spot in the river where people dug down and made a hot spring. We stopped at one of the commercial hot springs and it was like 25$ each… not happening. We stopped at a campground and went looking around the river for a while, no luck. About 15k down the road we seen a rest area and stopped there. We walked along the river a little bit and seen some people sitting in pools… we ran back and grabbed our swimmers and gave it a shot. Not super hot but warm enough. Problem was the mosquitoes were terrible, bad enough to ruin the time there.

We pulled into Christchurch and found bens apartment easily. We were really tired, so we ordered a pizza and went to bed.

More later…