Balfour to Haast (27 February - 2 March 2008)
Our next major town to head to was Queenstown. En Route we saw a town called Balfour and we just could not resist the urge to stop there because back in South Africa, Eon’s home town is Balfour.
And would you believe - this town looks so much like the South African Balfour. The town, the landscape, even the people in their small farming community. We spend the evening in the local tavern/restaurant/camping ground (all on the same premises and run by the same family). We met some locals who gave us the history of the town and even showed us some photos from way back when.
The next day it was off to Queenstown. As we got ready to leave, Eon realized that he has no more clean underwear. I told him it was impossible seeing that we did our laundry only three days ago in Kaitangata. And that is when it hit me - we never took all our laundry off from the washing line - we left all our underwear and some of our clothes back in Kaitangata. I bought a phone card and phoned up those lovely people from the Kaitangata Riverside Motor Park. When they answered the phone and heard it was me speaking, I did not even have to say why I am phoning. They had put our laundry in a bag and were waiting for our call. I asked if someone was maybe coming up to Queenstown’s side and to maybe bring the laundry with them, but they refused and said they will courier the clothes up to Queenstown at no cost. That’s New Zealand for you!
So off to Queenstown it was. But what a total disappointment this place turned out to be. Picking up our almost-lost laundry was just about the only reason we stayed in town for the night. Queenstown is s tourist hub, filled with adrenaline crazed youngsters that came to Queenstown for a bungee jump, sky-dive, river rafting or something of the like. Now both Eon and I are great fans of the adrenaline pumpers, but we are not crazy enough to pay this much for it. Good thing that we had a good dose of adrenaline rush during the first six months of our trip!
We drove for about two hours, stopping all the way for some short walks into the forest. But it was still raining and so the walking was limited. We stopped at a town named Wanaka and decided to camp there for the night. Wanaka is such a nice little town, with a pleasant feel to it. We went to Puzzle World, and for $10 each we struggled our way through an adult maze (Eon and I will probably not do too well in a game show with this type of challenge) and wandered through some pretty intricate illusion rooms.
The next day we drove up to Boundary creek. We arrived at the DOC site at around 13:00 and it was still pouring down. We spent the whole day in our van, playing an assortment of card games from 13:00 until 20:00!
The next morning we hit the winding road through the Haast Pass. We could not resist the word play with this pass - ‘dis tyd vir Haast Pass se nuuskas, vroegaand net na ses’ 
Click on image to view Balfour, Wanaka and Haast gallery: