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Our last Day in NZ Driving back to Queenstown from Haast

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 Leaving Haast at 8.30 am, we have another 3 hours plus of driving to get us to Queenstown, where we are staying overnight near the airport before catching a 7 am flight home tomorrow. The Haast Pass road is yet another drive with stunning scenery and a bit less hilly that our previous few days as the road mostly follows the valley through which the Haast River Flows. There are a number of scenic stops along the way, three of which feature waterfalls, in the Mount Aspiring National Park. Our first stop, not that far out of Haast, is the Roaring Billy Falls, which are part of The Roaring Billy Creek that cascades down into the Haast River.                               Walkway to the falls                                    Roaring Billy Falls            ...
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Drive to Haast

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Leaving Hokitika at 9 am, the first 70 km of our drive this morning was over relatively flat terrain with dairy farming appearing to be a popular past time. We made good time until we hit Mt Hercules Scenic Drive which was back to the usual winding our way up and down hills with great views.  This pattern more or less continued where we would drop down into fertile valleys full of happy cows to then take on the next mountainous section. The was plenty of roadworks, which in NZ often have a 30 km/hr speed limit sand lots of single lane bridges. The scenery though is stunning.  A few small towns were on the highway, but there was nothing that encouraged us to stop until we reached Franz Joseph Glacier, which coincided with our normal morning tea break time at around 11 am. First priority was to get a cup of coffee, then to drive on to the carpark to walk to the glacier viewing area.                        ...
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Hokitika

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Today is mostly driving across the mountain range which we expect to slow going, before finally getting to the flatter valleys over the range and the coastal areas of the west coast. There are a number of small villages we pass through but end up deciding to have our morning tea in Murchison. There is quite a modern cafe on the highway, Beechwood Cafe, where we and most of the rest of the travelling public appear to have pulled in for a coffee and maybe a scone. After our coffee we continue to wind our way up and down the mountainsides, soon seeing a sign that we are approaching Buller Gorge the site of New Zealand's longest swing bridge. Having become quite attracted to swing bridges on this trip we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see this one, maybe even a quick walk across. As we approached the carpark it seemed that we may be looking at a complete amusement park to which the swing bridge provided access. We wandered in to the entrance, said we would just like to see the...
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