South Island Explorations

We stayed pretty close to "home" on Friday since we'd spent so much time in the car getting to Mt. Cook on Thursday. We did talk some strolls around the property just to soak in its kind of down-home beauty.

The Chicken Hilton was just behind our little place

Views from the Chicken Hilton

Our little place- LOVE!

We did make it our to my favorite smoothie cafe for a light lunch. This place needs to come to Fishers!! They make salads and put them in wraps which make them portable and a bit more delicious.

The best smoothie shop in the Southern Hemisphere 

We ran into the grocery store to get some "minced" pork and cheese for dinner. Our refrigerator had come unplugged somehow on Thursday night ruining all of our groceries. This was a bummer because they're pretty pricey here. Our Airbnb host was kind enough to pay to replace the groceries! What a nice surprise considering how most New Zealanders seem to lack what I think of as normal social/ business skills.  

Mince pork (ground pork) burgers with crash potatoes 

The neighbors hanging out again

The driveway view is remarkable  

Guard goat

Not a cute guy, but friendly!

 We had a few raw potatoes leftover so we took them over to what our host called her "guardian goat." It was actually just a goat someone dropped off on her property that she took a shine to, but thinking of him as a guard is much funnier. He didn't know what to make of the potatoes but he was happy to have some attention!

The homestead

Saturday morning we checked out of our little place (sad!) and headed North a bit to the lakeside town of Wanaka.

Views from the Crown Range Road
(the highest main road in New Zealand at an elevation of 3,766)

The famous Wanaka Tree

Obligatory selfie with the tree

If you follow New Zealanders on any kind of social media (which I did leading up to the trip), you'd see photos of the lone tree growing in the middle of Lake Wanaka. They're very proud of this lonely willow and while it was kind of neat to see the photographs I'd seen previously made it look a little more...special. I don't know. It was mildly lame. We took a walk around the lake, though, which was lovely!

Lake Wanaka

Jackson skipping rocks

Petefish.

We stopped in at a little cafe in town for a flat white for Jackson (not as good as they are in Australia) and I got a hot chocolate (again, not as good as the Aussie version). We did meet a guy traveling around New Zealand who lived in Chicago now but grew up in Bloomington so he loved seeing Jackson's IU hat. As I always say, small world!

They grow a ton of fruit around this area and are especially proud of their wines. We decided to stop for some fresh strawberries and peaches. Then Jackson saw that they made their own ice cream and he was in! They took homemade vanilla ice cream and tossed in their strawberries that had been lightly frozen to a cone-shaped object and in a minute out came out the freshest, fruitiest treat. Jackson was in heaven. The small lick he allowed me to take was quite nice. ;)

We had to stop at Jackson Orchard! 

Who knew that an area called the Roaring Meg would be so lovely?

We'd seen the signs for Roaring Meg for a few days now so we decided to stop and see what it was all about. It turns out it was just a part of the river that makes noise during floods! It was really gorgeous, though!

Check out that water's coloring!

Gorgeous!

We also stopped on the way back to Queenstown to watch bungee jumpers. Jackson cannot wait to go. The weather got too nasty for a jump that afternoon, but he is set on doing it in Auckland. I'd never bungee jump as it is against my religion. :) I have a firm belief that getting the Heaven and having to start out with an apology for how you died isn't a good thing. :)

Headed off to bungee ;)

We made it back to Queenstown, checked in at our Crowne Plaza (which felt extra luxurious after being out in the country) and headed into town for lunch/dinner.

Fergburger

I'd heard about this burger place years ago on Food Network so we waited in the long line to try it out. All in it took us an hour to get two burgers, fries and an order of onion rings. The only part worth all of that waiting was the onion rings. They were amazing and the homemade aioli sauce was fantastic. The burgers were burnt and dry. I also ordered mine plain and it came with a ton of sauces on it which was mildly annoying. The place was SO crowded that it was hard to find a place to sit down. We ended up next to a bunch of American college students who embodied all that everyone hates about Americans. :)

The onion rings are amazing.
The burgers were yucky.

After that we strolled around town for a bit before calling it an early night. I spent an embarrassingly long time in a hot shower (the country house only had 10 minutes of hot water per day). I guess I had forgotten how accustomed I am to the conveniences of city dwelling! 

Sunday is our last day in Queenstown. We have an evening flight to head to Wellington on the North Island for our last week of adventuring. We did get some good news last night that United had a flight going from Auckland to San Francisco directly and we were able to get on it instead of having to fly through Beijing. They made that change for no extra money. I guess it pays to travel on United mileage! While we were looking forward to seeing the Great Wall, the freezing temperatures in China this time of year didn't exactly excite us. We'll be spending A TON less time on airplanes now and while we have an extended layover in San Francisco (6 hours or so) at least our phones will work and we have United Club access. Hooray!