The Long Way to Milford

• Peters Lookout, SH80
• 13:20
• 11°C, clear, cold wind

Day three, State Highway 80, and Aoraki sat at the end of the road for forty straight kilometres like a destination invented by a tourism board. I drove it at ninety with both hands on the wheel and made the van's previous renters proud. Every pull-off had one campervan in it doing exactly what we were doing.

• Lake Tekapo
• 17:40
• 9°C, still

The Church of the Good Shepherd is small, stone, and outnumbered forty to one at all times. I waited out two tour buses with a thermos and got ninety seconds of it standing alone against the lake. The water really is that colour; it is glacial flour, not a filter, and I checked because I did not believe it either.

arrive before eight or after five, there is no third option

• Hooker Valley track
• 11:10
• 7°C, wind funnelling down-valley

Ten kilometres of boardwalk and swing bridges pointed straight at the country's tallest mountain, and the whole track hums when the wind gets under the middle bridge. At the end there is a lake with icebergs in it in April. I filmed the glacier face for five minutes and the audio is entirely wind and one German man saying wow at intervals.

• Frankton, Queenstown
• 10:05
• 8°C, frost gone by ten

Nobody puts the supermarket run in the highlights reel, but the PAK'nSAVE in Frankton has the Remarkables behind the car park and honestly it is a better backdrop than most viewpoints I have queued for. Bought gas for the cooker, sausages, and a fourth beanie, because the other three were somewhere in Trevor.