My last day in Queenstown was quite a lazy one, I thought about doing a bungy jump, but after the Skydive I really can't bring myself to spending $125 minimum for something that'll last a couple of seconds. So I took a drive out to Glenorchy which was really not worth it as the road was along Lake Wakatipu (i.e. the Lake in Queenstown) and it was a very foggy day, still the road presented some driving challenges: in some places, sheer cliff face one side, drop to the Lake the other and down to a single lane with some sharp bends, bet there's been a few accidents along there. Glenorchy itself could best be described as a one horse town (except I saw two in a field as I entered the town) and there really was nothing there, so I took a couple of pictures of the foggy lake and headed back to Queenstown. I then went to the Chard Farm winery and tried a few of their wines, which were quite tasty it has to be said. I then spent most of the afternoon doing the thing you always seem to do when travelling, repacking your bag, amazing how much more space it creates every time! Went to watch Bulletproof Monk in the evening which wasn't bad.
The drive to Wanaka was pretty uneventful, decided to head to Cromwell first, but there was not much there so I headed straight back to take the Alpine Scenic Road route to Wanaka (i.e. very steep and windy). Got to the hostel about 1, but the office is only open between 5 and 8 in the evening, so I went into town for a couple of hours before checking in. The hostel is pretty nice as is the town, much how I expected most hostels in NZ to be, which is nice.
Today I got my (third) memory card from my camera transferred to CD so I could post some recent pictures (I may also post some older ones now I've found an internet cafe with CD-ROM drives!). I then headed up to Puzzling World which was quite cheap and worth a couple of hours. I decided to do the difficult course around the maze, which is supposed to take 1-1.5 hours, but without haring about the place I managed it in what I feel is a respectable 42 minutes. The rooms of illusion are pretty cool if a little shortlived, in particular the room of following faces is quite eerie, I doubt the pictures will do that justice (basically lots of faces of Einstein, Mother Teresa and four other famous people that follow you around as you walk). And amazingly there was some snow last night at Cardrona so I'll probably head up there tomorrow for some skiing.
Posted by Alexis at August 1, 2003 08:30 AM