I'm a day behind writing (and more than a year behind in transcribing), but I'll try to get caught back up. We opted for a cold breakfast only forcing our chef to slice carrots, oranges, and ginger for a morning smoothie rather than cooking a complete breakfast. We then got a very interesting garden tour from the head gardener. It felt strange to have our car brought up to us and our bags brought down, but our lifestyles of the faux-rich and pretend-famous were coming to a close.
We headed toward Mt. Cook, stopped for lunch in a shopping center where I had a delicious savory pie, and then rolled on. As the gardner had promised the first hour of the drive wasn't that pretty, but soon the vistas improved. When we hit the brilliant blue of Lake Tekapo we had to pull over to take pictures. Sediment disturbance caused by glaciers when they formed the lake gave it a bright blue coloring. It was gorgeous. Mt. Cook became visible an hour later in front of a bright blue lake as well. Our DOC campground was in the shadow of a glacier and hill a hill in the shadow of Mt. Cook. We set up camp and walked 45 minutes until we could see Mt. Cook clearly. We had dinner at a ski lodge, I had Sir Edmund Hillary's Pork Sausages. It was the most expensive meal (we've paid for). We went to bed while it was still light out and awoke to a light rain and awoke to a light-ish rain, and awoke to rain.
We packed our wetness in a hurry just before 7 AM, skipped the hike we'd planned and pointed toward Queenstown. We had breakfast in Twizel in a park with food courtesy of an open Four Square supermarket. Driving on to Queenstown, we stopped to admire Merino wool and possibly the home of Shrek the most famous sheep (blinded by his 25 kilogram coat). I'm not clear on the fame or Shrek's life story. Traffic picked up as we entered Queenstown, so did lodges and perhaps intensity. C compared Queenstown to Gatlinburg, it's apt, but it's also like an amped up ski town or college town where adventure activity is the university. Almost every third store on the main drag was able to book some type of adventure for an interested traveler. We go canyoning tomorrow.
We had lunch at a kebab place and then decided to separate for the afternoon. C went to Arrowtown and I rented a mountain bike and rode around the peninsula. The scenery was great, but getting my heart pumping and getting a taste for what a mountain bike could really do were even better. It was mostly flat stretches, but there were some wiggles through trees and over rocks. I returned to town the same way I'd come pumping hard to get back. It took about two hours and then I spent 45 minutes more trying to climb some of the ridiculously steep streets around. I don't know if I've ever climbed anything so steep for so long. I had to stop because my legs were burning. It was great in an odd sort of way. Tonight we're up on the roof deck of our hostel the Laughing Southerner after pizza at Winne's (and a Monteith Black- yum) and some ginger dark fudge. The view from here is once again spectacular as clouds have just released the tall peak to the North (?). If it weren't for the 500 or so resort-style homes and hotels in my view I could believe I was in Middle Earth looking to unload the ring.
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