Te Wanaka Lodge South Island

... the hostel where it was warm and dry. In the kitchen was a very forlorn Ben, who had yet again failed to go skydiving. Poor boy. Anyhow, we soon set about the task of preparing a monster roast for 6 - potatoes, onion, parsnips, kumara (sweet potato), pumpkin, swede, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, peas and sweetcorn, some gravy and for the meat-eaters a joint of New Zealand lamb. It's been a while since I tucked into a roast, I'm not sure ...

... POP) we took the kids to 'Puzzling World' which they had really been looking forward to. Puzzle World although not cheap to enter ($43 for us all to do maze & Illusion rooms) was great fun. Kate didn't like the room where all these 3D faces of famous people like Mother Teresa, Beethoven & Abe Lincoln follow you as you walk past them, and I wasn't too keen on the room that was titled at what seems to be a 45 degree angle - I pretty much felt ill as soon as I entered it ...

... only half-second flashes in the film! Frodo slightly less irritating than I remembered. Wanaka is very beautiful - tree-lined lake - all autumn-gold coloured poplars and a windy path with lovely mountain backdrop. Jack: My Ribs ache today: We drove back to Queenstown and I picked up my glasses. They said they didn't have them and then they looked in the lost property box and found them, on ...

... to get anywhere NEAR dry. 7: We would have been easier and cheaper off handwashing everything in the shower with us and hanging it outside over the lawnchairs to dry! (The lawnchair method of drying we had to do anyway as the dryers only managed to make money evaporate and not moisture :P) (As a side note: Washing machines that we have encountered elsewhere in New Zealand do not have any temperature indications on its settings. You only get to select whether it is ...

... for them and changed Daniels opinion. We all watched our videos before being dropped back at the hostel on a major high. We spent the afternoon chilling out, watching our videos again and looking through our pictures before watching a film in the cinema room. All feeling rather tired after such an adrenalin rush and Sherri, well having slept most of the day, was still tired, so we had another BBQ down at the bar and a few chilled drinks with people from the bus before bed.

... liegt recht weit suedlich und hat grossartige Skigebiete) letztens gab es in den Bergen sogar schon Schnee, sah wunderschoen aus, aber man hat die kalte Luft leider auch gleich hier unten gespuert. Da ich ja leider nur Schlitten fahren kann und beschlossen habe, dass ich beide Beide in Asien noch gut brauchen kann, werde ich auf das Wintersporterlebnis hier wohl lieber verzichten und wieder ...

... everybody was talking about. That morning we decided to go back to the view point at lake Matheson before we headed out of town. See the difference?             While I didn't like a do-over.  You can see the difference.  Doing a bit better now than we had in a few days, we set off down the coast. Most of the road was heavy jungle/forest.  There were a few coastal views. After stops for coffee/soda and ...

We set off further south through the continuing beautiful scenery of the Southern Alps, stopping off to view the Franz Joseph glacier. We walked from the car park to the first stopping point, and possibly the least impressive view of the glacier, however with Steven on D's shoulders it would have been a hard slog. By this point, Steven had already been named ...

... else. After listening to them start complaining about how tired they were, we quickly agreed to let the fairies live again! And now for the miscellaneous highlights: - The Te Kaihinaki Boulders in Moeraki. These boulders date back many millions of years and were created from small lime crystals. The large spherical boulders sit mysteriously amidst an otherwise flat stretch of sand beach. Some of them are cracked open, like giant hatched eggs and ...

... compared to the daytime temps I'd gotten used to anyway. By Scottish terms it was still balmy, but as I was taking pics my fingers were feeling the cold. With the sun rising behind the mountain, the light for pictures wasn't the best and my flash would occasionally fire in complaint. The waterfall still looked majestic despite this but after about 10 mins of staring in wonder, I was wet as well as cold due to the massive amount of spray generated by water hitting ...