25.12.2013 - Haast

Christmas day in New Zealand! We drove from Queenstown to Haast, a drive of about 240km. It was a
pretty smooth ride over mountains passing countless beautiful lakes and sights. We meet just a few cars
on hour way and when we finally arrived in Haast we felt like we've just arrived on a deserted island.
There were a handful of houses claiming to be a city and everything was closed because of Christmas day.
No supermarket no nothing!

Luckily our landlady had a tip for us that the local hotel might be open and we could get some food there.
So we headed to that hotel and they served us some food right before everyone, in a felt radius of 200km,
came to the restaurant to get some food. Stuffed with fish and chips we drove back towards our lodge and
spotted a small way leading towards the beach. We went in there and what we saw there was just marvellous.
There were just a few guys there in tents and thats it, the beach was completely empty. The waves looked
like there was a storm somewhere on the ocean, they were bigger than usual and hitting the beach one after
the other. The whole area was covered in thick mist making it hard to see the end of the beach to the left and
right.

So I was standing there the beach and the ocean in front of me, rainforest and the mountain behind me
everything covered in mist. The sunlight playing with the waves and the misty mountains and the forrest.
INCREDIBLE !

We took a lot of pictures trying to preserve the moment and this fantastic composition. We decided to take
the car and just drive down the coast and see whats there. Heading south for a few kilometres crossing a few
one lane bridges we ended up on a road, straight for about 20km and to the left and right a huge rainforest
flanked the street, the far distance covered in fog. It looked like an endless street going nowhere. Beautiful!

Well the street actually lead, well almost, nowhere. There were just a handful of houses and I guess we could
have went on for hours like this. It was close to sunset, now - so we thought - heading back to the beach might
be a good idea to check out the waves and all that beauty in the sunset. What happened there I can only
describe as the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen in my life. The colours and the light changing with every
second, the waves, the mist, the mountains, the rainforest. WOW!
Nothing else to say. I'm glad. I've seen something like this in my life!
Go do the same! Now!