The Great Outdoors

Another beautiful bright sunshiny day. We took our time heading out this morning. Made a stop at the desk of the Youth Hostel and booked a jet boat river safari in Makarora for the afternoon. We didn't have to be up there until 2ish so we decided to take a walk around Lake Wanaka. More awesome views. Here, I must mention the facilities were very high tech as you will see in the photos. From there we headed for a trek up Mt. Iron. Now this is no Mt. Everest, but considering that I had resigned myself to the fact that I would not be doing much walking at all due to miscellaneous malfunctioning body parts, climbing any sort of mountain seemed like a real feat - or should I say feet? But there comes a time when you just have to suck it up, and so I did. I would like to thank my husband, Merrell shoes, and my Fijian hairdresser (it was extremely hot and the new do was perfect!) for making this effort possible. The views from the top were well worth the climb. Before heading off to Makarora, we went across the street to Puzzling World. Don't ask, I have no idea, we just roamed around all the free parts and took a bunch of pictures outside. It was all a bit strange. Might have been better if we had hired a kid for the day.

Heading back toward Haast Pass, we had the same spectacular views as yesterday. We checked in with the river folk and then grabbed a bite to eat. Shared a venison sandwich at the local cafe. We had noticed the mass quantities of deer grazing not too far from the town. Now here we were eating Bambi. I have to say it was pretty delicious.

We met up at the van with the rest of the group who would be in our boat. There was a large party of some 20 somethings who were in town for a wedding. We wound up with 7 of them. All very nice. The ride was great and our guide was especially good. He made sure to stop and check out the trout from time to time. We even passed a woman who had a fish on. I took a picture and got lucky with the shot. Jet boating is basically speeding down the river in shallow water - for more thrills, they spin and make very sharp cuts and turns. On the way back, however, our boat broke down and we had to hang around counting sheep (literally) waiting for our rescue boat. There are worse places to be held up. Nobody minded too much and a good time was had by all.

After a cup of coffee (New Zealanders apparently love their coffee ,there are cafes everywhere), we headed toward Cromwell where we will be staying with another ATC couple for 2 nights before our 4 day bike trip. We pulled into the driveway close to 7pm. It is really nice that the sun doesn't set till around 8:30 and it is still relatively light at around 9ish. We seem to be taking full advantage of all the daylight we can. We met our hosts, Linda and Reg. Linda works occasionally for I-Site, which is the NZ tourist board that is everywhere. She was the one who sent me all kinds of information, books, maps before we left the states. After a quick shower, we went in search of dinner. Cromwell is very small with lots of vineyards and not much else. There is a town center which consists of a little outdoor mall with shops and a couple of restaurants. We picked the Pub Bistro and this time shared a lamb shank dinner. It was yummy. With all these sheep around you cannot go wrong with lamb. A funny story that Marc told us - he had ordered the lamb and asked the waiter what was the cut. The waiter went to the chef and returned saying "the left calf". We also treated ourselves to a NZ dessert called Pavlova.  That was a great ending to a great day.

We had hoped to go into Queenstown tomorrow for some white water rafting, but the water level is very low and would probably be a waste of money. So we were thinking instead to try the gondola up and the luge ride down. Of course, the wind has picked up - sound familiar? The only thing I know for sure about tomorrow is that I will be doing a wash.

Good On ya!