Te Anau to Queenstown

We left Te Anau for the three hours, or so, drive to Queenstown through the rolling countryside and with ‘The Remarkable’ mountains coming in to view. It was a lovely journey and the weather was very good with a temperature around 22 degrees Centigrade with mostly sun. We stopped for lunch next to the Lake just outside of Queenstown and ate our Subway rolls we had bought in Te Anau.

This is a Post Box outside a Farm

We arrived and located our Motel on the main road in to Queenstown, a bit noisy, yet on the other hand close enough to walk in to town without having to worry where to park the car.

As we checked in Noel hit the door locking button of the car remote

only to find it did not work. Our immediate though was that the battery had gone but when asking about it in reception it was mentioned that this was a common occurrence due to their special internet WiFi links? I have never heard of this before.

The photo on the right is the view from our Motel

Noel last visited Queenstown in 1988 and says the change is

incredible as now it’s the centre for the ‘all action’ sports of Bungee Jumping, The Shotover Jet boats, White water rafting, mountain climbing, yes you have it all but none of the things we wanted to do but we have discovered a Vineyard tour which is a little bit more to our style.

We then walked around town for a while and picked up some hot pies for tea, then sat on the side of the lake watching the world go by until the skies started looking a little bit angry and it looked like rain, we were not dressed for rain, we were dressed for the sun.

Last night whilst we were having dinner at the Chinese Restaurant in Te Anau, the heavens opened for about as long as it took us to eat our dinner luckily it had stopped by the time we had to leave. But wow! did it rain, we did not want to get caught in that.

We also used the time in town today for Noel to get a haircut and also to go to an Internet Café to update the Photo Blog but even here the line speeds are slow, perhaps 2 meg so it takes a long time.

Tomorrow we are going to find out about Scenic Flights over Mount Cook and the best place to do them from, before we head off to the Vineyards and perhaps watch the Bungee Jumpers break their legs, or something. When walking home there was an attractive young lady who had possibly tried one of the above activities as she was gingerly walking on crutches.

Queenstown is a bustling place with many restaurants of all types and coach loads of visitors, fun for a couple of days but we do enjoy the quieter places.