Day 5 – Friday 3 April

A lovely morning as we walked down the hill for breakfast, watching the paragliders sailing around the large hill dominating Queenstown. This morning it was the turn of the Halo Cafe (after all it was Good Friday) where we were served by “angels” according to the names on the girls T-shirts. Tereza settled for her normal poached eggs but I lashed out & tried the breakfast burrito, what a great choice, both delicious & very filling, lunch is looking like missing out. As always, we shared a cappuccino (Tereza has the creamy froth & I have the leftover coffee latte) & it was quite tasty. We wandered around downtown Queenstown this morning looking for the restaurant for tonight called the “Botswana Butchery”. After a lot of walking up & down streets & asking a couple of people we eventually stumbled across it overlooking the beach at the edge of the lake, totally nowhere near where we had previously walked & a little out of the way. We added to the reservation made by Eugene & Charlotte Somogyi, friends of Roberto & Susanna Darias, Tereza’s cousin from America, who had been travelling with them until Roberto’s mother became extremely ill & they had to cut short their New Zealand vacation & go back home.

This afternoon we drove out to Glenorchy, a small town at the other end of Lake Wakatipu & about 50km away. The drive was very scenic with the mountains getting higher, more & more snow on them & closing in around us as we drove further up the valley. Breathtaking & beautiful are some words that come to mind to help describe how stunning the scenery is. At Glenorchy we stopped near the wharf & had a look inside the rebuilt Glenorchy Railway Station & the shortest rail track in the whole of New Zealand. The wind was blowing well by this time but was not cold, surprisingly, it was around 22C & very pleasant.

For our next little venture we broke out our trekking sticks & headed off on the Glenorchy Wetlands walk around the Glenorchy Lagoon next to the Dart River. The walk was around 3 to 4 kms & very pleasant, with a well maintained track & very good raised walkways over the wetlands. We were pleasantly surprised to see so many black swans feeding in the lagoon at such a high altitude. There were clouds & rain in the nearby mountains that seemed threatening, however, our whole walk was sunny & very warm. We met a few tourists also enjoying the walk. We rewarded our efforts with a shared apple strudel & a large cappuccino at the Glenorchy Cafe before heading back to Queenstown & enjoying the magnificent lakeside & mountain scenery from the other direction.

It is not surprising that they made the Lord of the Rings & Hobbit movies in NZ, the mountains do look like something out of Middle Earth – they are surreal.

Botswana Butchery was the venue for dinner tonight. The venison & the lamb were superb, recommended if you ever venture to Queenstown. The wine selection was a bit rich for us, some bottles around $10,000 (not a typo).