Day 6 - Wanaka - Queenstown - Te Anau

Woke up this morning and put a load of washing on before we left.  Packed our bags and hit the road back to Queenstown and Coronet Peak for another chance to play in the snow.  Man, do you know how difficult it is to go to the loo when you are ‘all rugged up’ ?  You can’t ever leave it to the last minute and I pity anyone who gets gippo guts !!!!!  Lift up one jacket, two jackets, three jackets and T-shirt.  Undo pants and pull them down, lift up thermals, pull down thermals, pull down knickers – finally you are there !!!!  And then of course do it in reverse once you are finished provided your scarf isn’t too long and finds its way between your legs !!!  So much to think about when all you want to do is have a pee !!!!

Anyway, we had so much fun.  This time we built up a stock of snowballs before starting our snow fight – it didn’t make any difference – I still lost basically because my aim is cr*p !!!!!  But so much fun.  I did get Al one good shot as I ‘forgot’ to shout incoming (an agreed call before starting to play) and he looked up, saw it and ducked only he ducked his head and it landed on the back of his neck and slid down his back !!!!  We both started with 10 snow balls but I think Al threw about 17 or 18 at me because he was just catching the ones I was throwing at him and then throwing them back at me !!!

I am so glad we went up to the snow on Monday because so much of the snow had already melted by the time we got back up there today with no fresh snow falls.  Most of what we were playing in today was very icy compared to how fluffy and light it felt on Monday.  I can’t believe that it is the middle of August and there is so little snow.  Everyone we have spoken to has said how unusually warm this winter has been and how little snow they have had.  I guess I am just really happy that we did manage to get to play in the snow twice.

 

The second little snowman (seal) that we built !!

Look how much less snow there is here compared to the other day

After we left Coronet Peak we went back to Queenstown to have a Ferg burger but it was so busy there we gave it a miss.  We stopped at Real Journey and booked our tickets for Doubtful Sound tomorrow.  Balked a little at the price ($198 each) but then decided that we would do it as our anniversary present to each other.  We left Queenstown and headed for Te Anau.

We found the loveliest place called Radfords Motel on Lake Te Anau – pricier than I wanted but when I saw the rooms and the little touches in them (lovely smelling burners in the rooms, chocolates on the pillow, tea bags for the bath with bath salts and lovely smellies in them, spa bath, really lovely looking units and best of all, free wi-fi for the two nights we were there), I said to Al that I thought we should spoil ourselves and it was only 2 nights !!!! 

We went into ‘town’ and watched a movie on the Fijordlands – what amazing photography !!!  It was so good even though I had to close my eyes sometimes when the helicopters were filming over the sides of the mountains !!!!!

We had dinner at a real cowboy looking place before going back to the unit to have an early night given we have an early start to the day tomorrow to go to the Sound.