on, but it was still very picturesque, and once it got too cold we took advantage of the camp kitchen to stay warm. I managed to grab the attention of the locals by setting the cooker on fire while grilling my piece of blue cod - it was a little hotter than I had bargained for - but it didn뭪 do any lasting damage - to the cooker or the fish!!!

The next morning we woke up very early (admittedly only because nature called!!), but were amazed by the sunrise - well strictly speaking you couldn뭪 actually see the sun, but the sky was literally on fire all bright orange and red!!!! Have a look at the photos - it really was amazing!! We drifted back off to sleep after that though, and must have been really tired, because we woke up at around eleven o clock!! That was it - the alarm was going on from now on!!!! We finally made it into town in the afternoon, and spent most of it doing a

mammoth internet and photo backup session, and this was when we first started looking into our US visas, and discovered that it was necessary to have an interview in Auckland, and to book one you had to phone a premium rate number charging ?.50 a minute. Grudgingly we went to the phone box, only to discover that it was not possible to call a premium rate number from a call box in New Zealand - and as we were to find out in the ensuing days, hardly possible from anywhere!!! Still, at that point it was too late on Friday to do anything about it, and too late to get to the DOC campsite with time to cook before dark, so we opted for the leftovers of last night뭩 chilly with chippy chips in the car park next to the lake.

The next morning we had a brief walk down the river next to the campsite, and then made our way to Queenstown. We weren뭪 so sure about Queenstown, as the Germans we met