On our way out of Wanaka we stopped by the Lake to take in the view. While there, and with complete disregard to nearby rowers, I thought it might be fun to teach Lily and Hamish how to skip stones across the water. They enjoyed themselves, but need to practice as some of the rowers managed to get away...
We called into a place called "Puzzling World" (apparently the far less shonky sounding "Puzzle World" must have already been taken), and did the tourist thing with the leaning tower out the front.
Inside, there was a sloping room that genuinely put you off balance. Hamish quite enjoyed crashing into some German and Japanese tourists, much to our dismay. The perspective room was also interesting (and less mortifying) - I didn't realise I had such small children.
We crossed the 45th Parallel on our way to Queenstown (putting us closer to the South Pole than the Equator) and once there took a Gondola (or as Hamish kept calling them, an "Angela") to a lovely restaurant on the top of an insanely steep mountain - the view was amazing, in a 'get away from the edge of the balcony kids' kind of way.Sunday 11th April, 2010
We relished in our ability to sleep-in today due to our 2-night stop-over in Queenstown. Somewhat optimistically, I thought I'd wear a short-sleeved shirt and shorts on our walk through the landscaped town park. When we passed Scandinavians in scarves and mittens I knew I'd made a mistake.
The park was quite extensive and gave some pretty decent views of Lake Wakatipu. After a series of wacky facial expressions (I wonder where they get THAT from), I thought it might be best to take a photo of the children looking AWAY from the camera.
We took out a second mortgage on our house and paid the entry fee to the Kiwi and Birdlife Park. The Kiwi House was great, the Kiwis were larger than I had figured, and one decided to perform a kind of over-caffeinated interpretive dance against the glass of the enclosure. We were in hushed hysterics (no loud noises or flash photography you understand). We also came face-to-face with a Tuatara, an ancient variety of 3-eyed lizard. They have no idea how old they live, as the people keeping them don't last as long as the critters in question.
Lily managed to catch Josh in one of his rarely-photographed grins, so thought we'd up the 'awww factor' by including this piccie. Our adventures are about to take on a little more moisture as we head to the Fiordlands, apparently one of the wettest places on the planet. On the up-side, they also have Sandflies.
