Day 7 – Sunday 5 April

Queenstown is in such a beautiful location, Wakatipu Lake & the amazing mountains that surround it. Since our last visit in 2006 it has grown a lot. The place is designed for tourists. Lots & lots of Hotels/Motels & busloads of tourists, especially a lot of Chinese, seem to come here (after all it is the year of the sheep, what better place celebrate than NZ – it would be good if Australia could cash in from the Chinese too, after all we have a lot of sheep too). There are so very many activities to entertain tourists – bungy jumping, jet boating, canoeing, paragliding, mountain climbing, bush walking, scenic tours by bus/helicopter/plane etc. & etc. it’s almost endless. There are so many restaurants & wherever we ate the service was pleasant & the food very good – mainly the backpackers work in the service industry (where are the Kiwis – in Australia?) The shops are open until 9 pm. every day of the year. We enjoyed some of these tourist activities, especially our adventure on the Dart River which took about 7 hours. All good things must come to an end & there are so many other places we want to see in NZ & we are running out of time quickly.

Out of Queenstown early today with an 8am departure, then a stop at Cromwell Historic Village an hour later for breakfast at the Seed & Grain Cafe, inside next to the fire this time as it was a trifle chilly. The drive to Dunedin was uneventful, the road was very good, a little twisty in places & a little up & down as well. The scenery as we reached the coast was such a contrast to yesterday in the mountains as we drove through Taieri Mouth, unsurprisingly a small town at the mouth of the Taieri River. A walk on the beach at Brighton introduced us to the type of seaweed in this part of New Zealand, extremely long bull kelp totally unlike anything we have seen before.

We managed to find & book into a nice motel close to the centre of Dunedin by about 1pm then went for a short walk to the Otago Museum, about 2 blocks from the motel. Lunch at the museum & then a good look through the various sections until closing time at 5pm, very interesting, including lots of old ship bells that you are encouraged to ring, they are very loud. As we walked towards the centre of town (the “Octagon”) we admired a lot of beautiful old buildings in Dunedin, courtesy of the gold rush days, the sheep industry & the port. The city is full of shops & the centre of the Octagon is dominated by two beautiful old stone buildings, the Town Hall & St Pauls Church, there is also a statue of Robbie Burns.

Walking back to the motel we made an excellent choice for dinner by stopping at “The Reef” restaurant, with Tereza enjoying the seafood chowder & my sole fillet was superb.

Today it is Easter. There are a lot of bunnies in NZ but none of them brought us any chocolate eggs. I hope that they found Austin & Jackson in Australia & all the other children around the world.