Queenstown to Twizel – Valentines Day.

After several days of good weather we awoke to a grey sky and drizzle – Great. It has just been announced that there is a drought here so now it’s raining. Anyway it’s time to move on to Twizel and hopefully a flight around Mount Cook.

Our route took us up the Kawarau gorge past vineyards and bungee jump sites to the town of Cromwell. After the dramatic scenery of the gorge the land flattens out into farmland with many orchards of apple, plum, cherry and peach trees to name a few. Cromwell celebrates this with a huge sculpture of fruit at the entrance to the town and so we stopped and bought some peaches and cherries etc.

The town is beautifully laid out with a stream running through the shopping area and lots of trees and flowers. Here we had a coffee before moving on to find a picnic spot for lunchtime. We travelled up the Lindis Valley which is really lovely and a very hilly and found a perfect spot under trees by a small brook where we had lunch listening to the birds sing.

We arrived at the hotel around teatime and decided to eat at the hotel tonight. The Hotel was running a buffet with local Beef, Lamb and Pork and we both agreed that the Beef and Lamb tasted so much better than expected and the colour of the Lamb was much redder than we get in UK but the taste was really great. Had have a couple of glasses of wine to go with it though and Noel had Australian Shiraz as the wine waiter also agreed the NZ red’s are not to the same standard as the Ozzie