Grand Mercure Oakridge Wanaka

... soon sprang up when we talked about whether to stay another night. I stated that if we stayed another night we'd waste the next day driving the few hours to Fox Glacier, our next destination, and then just sitting around in the afternoon for hours, while we could just drive up in the afternoon after doing both hikes and Puzzling World. Sebastian and Dom said they felt that it was OK if we wasted one day, even if we did just sit around for hours in Fox ...

... horse ride, and the second tooth right after we got home to the very cool house, Te Ariki Nui, where we are staying. The house is super cool - it is very modern and long with huge glass doors on all sides that open up and crazy sculptures and art in the lawn. There is a statue of a man with an ax (who looks very real at night!), and a giant wooden circle, and a metal dog and three flags. You can see the ...

... taken so long we ended up cooking the fish at dusk, on a poorly working camping stove! With the help of our headlights we ate supper and then washed up in the dark before going to bed. Franz Josef Glacier is 11km long and in its central portion moves 5m per day. The amazing thing about the glaciers in this area is that they come right down to regenerating rainforest, which makes the contrast between ice and verdant green very dramatic. In our group were nine ...

So we have been keeping busy with the millions of things to do around here. While we were in Queenstown, Will and I went jet boating... which was pretty fun. The boat has 750 hp and goes like mad!! A few times I had to close my eyes and hold on to the bars for my life!! We were sooooo close to trees on the side of the river, huge rock outcroppings and the beach. Its a flat bottom boat so it can fun in less then a few inches of water!! It got the heart pumping thats for ...

... free and with much better wines. We drove over the Crown range with amazing views, the sun had now come out which made it even better. We went through another tiny ex-goldmining village called Cardrona where I had a look in the river for gold but couldn't see any so got bored and drove on. We got to Wanaka on the shores of Lake Wanaka which has to be the most beautiful lake we have seen and the locals claim it's been described as ...

... not uttering a word to one another. Strange. I always thought these hardened backpackers were, by nature, a socialble lot. Most of this lot should return to society and learn some social skills rather than moodily tramping around the world feeling superior. I'm off to bed. I was woken in the early hours by the mother of all downpours, which was annoying as this was probably the most comfortable bed I'd slept in since arrival. Tiredness soon took over and I slept well ...

Today was a great day.

We did absolutely NOTHING of any interest whatsoever.

The weather was cloudy & rainy, so there was no point doing any 'tramps' (why does that make me think of American Psycho?), and instead we decided to have a day of catching up on all the things we haven't had a chance to do for a while because we've been travelling.

I spent about 6 hours uploading ...

... which had us walking in the oppposite direction to what we thought, but we made it in the end, and did end up wondering how exactly we managed to get lost in the first place as there are so many signs pointing it out!!!

It was such a good place! As soon as you walk up to the entrance you see people taking photos as there is this massive leaning clock, and the actual clock runs backwards!!! weird!

We decided to do the maze first as the ...

... worden.
Erika was dus terug van de VVV en ik had haar gevraagd om voor mij uit te kijken naar folders over Kajakken hier en naar info over Pigeon Island, maar Erika had iets meer gedaan dan dat. Binnen no-time had zij mijn missie volbracht door bij de VVV alles na te vragen over Pigeon
Island en dus met alle informatie die ik wilde gaan zoeken aan te komen zetten. Hmmmm. Ik had me al een paar keer lichtelijk geergerd aan mijn reisgenote en dit was me nu echt ...