Woke in Geraldine had a 20 min walk around the town then breakfast and away by 8am.

Before leaving the camp we booked the highlight of our NZ trip a helicopter flight over the glaciers. Unfortunately this was a bit in doubt as a sea mist was covering most of the lower South island.

As we headed up through Farlie and bought fuel the mist was still very heavy and we missed all of the views over the various valleys on the way, it did start to lift a bit later though and things looked promising. By the time we had got to Twizel at 11:00 it looked a sure thing.

Unfortunately as the helicopters carry a min/max of 6 people + the pilot and the people we were apparently sharing with had managed a puncture somewhere on the highway and were delayed, meaning we had to hang around until 12:30. Not really a bad thing as it turned out as by that time the sky had cleared up totally.

The flight lasted just 35 min's and boy it went fast, it was our first trip in a helicopter and was great fun we flew over the town and via the Ahuriri Conservation park with its surrounding dams and channels fed by the glaciers to several hydro electric plants.

Then to the Ben Ohau Range where we landed on the Glenmary glacier, chucked a few snow balls took heaps of photos and headed back. Needless to say the terrain is pretty rugged in this area and in the winter when covered in snow it must be an even more impressive sight. We both enjoyed the trip immensely and it was well worth the money (ouch).

Then we headed for Cromwell, not much to say about this town really it's on the way to Queenstown and Dunedin and is really just a stopping off point, but it has all the amenities you need and the top 10 site is as usual clean and well serviced. The terrain here is very dry at this time of year; it's a bit reminiscent of Western Australia really.

We walked into town (4k round trip) got still more groceries and a bottle of wine, then a pork chop dinner, a DVD and bed.