Sunday, September 2, 2012

Day 4 - Wanaka


Today we made our way down to Arrowtown.  What a quaint little place – reminded us both of Pilgrim’s Rest in South Africa.  We parked, walked up and down the central street, bought a pie (which was REALLY good – and that is saying something as I am not a pie kind of girl !!!) and hit the road to Queenstown.
We wandered around Queenstown for a while – didn’t do any shopping as there really isn’t anything that we needed or wanted.  We went up to Coronet Peak and that is where the fun began !!!!  Well it began sooner than that as I had to lie down on the drive up – I don’t do heights well at all.  There were cars parked everywhere – some parking spaces were really close to the edge but even if they had been open I wouldn’t have let Al park there !!!!  We found a parking eventually, put our ‘noisy’ pants on and went to find some snow to play in. We were a bit nervous about where we could play so eventually went inside and asked someone.  They were a bit surprised and asked a couple of times – you don’t want to ski or snow board, you just want to play ?  When they finally got that we didn’t want to ski or snow board they said that there were no designated play areas and that we could just go out and play anywhere in the snow but to make sure we keep looking for people coming down the slopes !!!!  We had so much fun – making and throwing snowballs (Al’s aim was heaps better than mine !!!) and just being like little kids in the snow.  I made an angel and pushed all the newly fallen snow off things (fences and posts etc) before we took our photo in front of the Coronet Peak sign.  On our way back to the car we stopped and built a little snowman (that actually looked more like a seal than a man !!!!) before leaving the snow. 

Making my snow angel
My snow angel finished 
 Look at all that snow !!!
 Standing on our 'undesignated play area' !
 It  looks like we are close to the edge - we are NOWHERE close !!
 Swiping all the freshly fallen snow off the posts
I Love You !
 
 
More laughs !
  Our snow man (dwarf ?)
Back down in Queenstown we decided to go for a cruise on the steam ship across the lake so went and parked the car and got tickets.  It wasn’t too crowded so that was good.  It was amazing going across the lake and listening to the commentary about the history of Queenstown and the surrounding landscape.  We could walk down and see how the steam ship actually worked as there was a platform above some of the working parts of the steamer. 
TSS Earnslaw 
 TSS Earnslaw
More laughs - having so much fun
On TSS Earnslaw going across Lake Wakatipu
View from Lake Wakatipu

After that we started to look into going to Doubtful Sound for a visit which entailed a change to our original plan so we got prices and went back to the hotel to think about it and see what we could work out.

We stopped at Cookie Time and got two hot cookies each – they were very nice – not sure if it was because we were cold and they were nice and warm or whether they were actually that good.  I said to Al that I didn’t think I would worry about having them again because they were too rich for me. (Who is the lady who eats two cookies and says that they are too rich ??????  Wonder if my taste buds are changing with my age ??????)

Al managed to get hold of a guy he used to play baseball and softball with who now lives in Wanaka and we made arrangements to catch up with him tomorrow.
Another great day in NZ with amazing weather and so many memories.

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