Our bus driver today is Q (Quentin). He’s Maori and has just graduated from school. There are some commonalties between drivers but they all have their own personalities. The common phrases they use are "cool"… "shsweet". I tried to spell that like they say it. "No worries" is often used and yea, yea, yea said very quickly when they mean yes. There are only seven people on our bus! This was a lovely day of driving. It was not raining today and was much brighter. It was not sunny for very long but it came at just the right spot. I found myself continually comparing today to how it would feel if you could drive through Yosemite or Yellowstone with no traffic! It was so pretty and it was like we had the whole area to ourselves. Not only no bumper to bumper cars but NO cars! This experience has been so nice because it’s just been so peaceful – sparsely populated!

We stopped at a little store and bought what we wanted to eat for a picnic and drove on down the road to pull off by a lake for lunch. I love these spur of the moment opportunities. No need to miss the beautiful moments in nature by sitting back somewhere in town to eat! Our afternoon drive was in a valley completely surrounded by mountains. It was gorgeous. I wished for 360-degree panoramic pictures! Between the peaks of these nearest mountains we’d get views of the PEAKS of the big mountains in the distance that were snowcapped. I just didn’t want to close my eyes long enough to blink. Some of these kids get on a bus and go sound asleep. I just wouldn’t ever nap any day because I didn’t want to miss anything! THE SUN CAME OUT!! Yea, yes, Virginia there is a sun.

We have seen lakes of the bluest colors! It is so gorgeous when the mountains and few clouds are reflected on the water. Today may have been my favorite. We stopped in a little village of Tekipa. It is so scenic. The lake has mountains all around it. We could see the snow capped peaks. We were close to the volcanoes and ski areas. This was a lovely day. Mountain Lupines in purples, lilacs, white, pink and occasionally some orange and yellow have been ALL OVER the hillsides and along the road. TONS of them! There is a little stone church (chapel) that is out on a point in the lake. It’s called the Church of the Good Shepherd. When you go in there is a window for the wall in the back behind the altar and you have a view of those snowcapped peaks reflected on that blue lake! It’s like a picture! It was so wonderful to see the sun! A LOT of weddings are held here. Close by is a monument or tribute to the working dogs. It’s a statue of a collie in bronze. In this Mackenzie area these working dogs are what made the sheep farming possible and they wanted to honor the dogs.

Well… that gorgeous sun was just a window of light in the day. It was soon back to raining as we traveled on in the afternoon. We passed so many deer farms today. I still do a double take when we pass by. There are tons of them! Pastures of deer grazing like we have cows grazing at home. We have seen more tourists and buses today and we’ve also seen a whole lot of touring bikers. I guess between Queenstown and Christchurch on the East Coast may be the most traffic on the island and that’s not much but noticeable because on the West (WET) coast we saw so little. We actually saw one section of four-lane road today for the first time. We also went over a two-lane bridge! Population just doesn’t merit two lanes on the West Coast! We reached Canterbury Plains – the flattest land we’ve seen in New Zealand!! We almost lost sight of any mountains at all for a little while.