January 4th, 2016

We departed Franz Josef while most of the town still slept... to the extent we had to travel a ways to Fox Glacier to find a restaurant that was open that early (7:30 am)
for breakfast. After that, we continued down route 6, which became increasingly less populated, as we headed towards Haast. The town of Haast was essentially the last stop
before heading into the national forest and mountains, and we picked up gasoline there. Once we were in Mount Aspiring National Park, we stopped at several small hikes, 
including Fantail Falls and the Blue Pools. We also stopped for a hike from one of the flats which went up to an overlook. The hike was... particularly vertical, and Jen
decided to turn back when part of the trail was washed out. Nick and I continued on, and eventually reached the overlook, which couldn't have been more than 10'x5', and which
had an obstructed view. We found one other hiker there, who had come down the trail in the other direction, and he assured us that there was no other overlook the other way.

As we exited the mountains and the pass, the beech forest gave way to a far more arid environment, and we came down into terrain that looked more like California than the rest
of NZ. We stopped for lunch at Wanaka, which was jam packed with tourists, and eventually managed to find a parking space. We had some extremely delicious pizza and smoothies
at a placed called the Urban Grind. From there, we headed south towards Queenstown, stopping briefly at Roaring Meg and a Gibbson's cheesery and wine cave. We headed into town,
which was also extremely busy, and eventually parked the car (very carefully) in the narrow parking garage. We had the front desk make us reservations at a local establishment
called Public Kitchen, where we had a pleasant dinner. The restaurant had a deck which we were out on, and on it was a rather plump looking duck called Edith, that was apparently
their unofficial mascot, and sat under tables when not scarfing crumbs offered to it by diners.