After our early morning air raid alarm practice, we were delighted to have a bit of a long lie before setting off on our journey to Wanaka. We had a quick coffee pitstop midway in Haast (Craig kept singing Du Hast while driving for ages...) and we arrived in Wanaka for lunchtime. With neither of us hungry we wandered around the lake to #thatwanakatree - New Zealand's most photographed tree which grows near the shore. It is such a popular Instagram spot that it is now named with a hashtag! After taking in the sights around the lake and the tree we made our way back into the town centre in search of some lunch. We ended up at Relishes Cafe where we shared a delicious baked camembert before making our way to the Ramada Hotel where we enjoyed a two night stay (courtesy of hotels.com, thanks to their reward night scheme!) We made the most of having lots of space and spent the rest of the afternoon spread out relaxing before heading out for a delicious dinner at Speight's Ale House.
In the sweltering heat we were delighted to come back down to an ice cream from Black Peak Gelato (that counts as lunch, right?!) and a wander around the nice air conditioned shops. This was followed by yet another relaxing afternoon (we were seriously milking this hotel room thing) and a tasty dinner at Bombay Palace. The next morning we set off on our journey to Queenstown, unfortunately being in a campervan meant we weren't able to take the most direct route but that worked fairly well in our favour as the scenery was pretty spectacular. Almost at our destination, we passed by Kawarau Bridge Bungy Centre and couldn't resist! We popped in to see what was on offer and despite neither of us being brave enough for the bungee jump itself we jumped at the chance to have a go on their extremely fun zipwire! After our adrenaline rush we made our way towards Arrowtown, a small gold rush village just outside of Queenstown where we enjoyed taking in the sites of the old Chinese settlement and to Craig's delight another Lord of the Rings filming location! Leaving Arrowtown we made our way to Lake View Holiday Park in Queenstown where we were booked to stay for the next 2 nights. After setting up, we headed in for a wander around the town however, the heavens opened so we opted to shelter in a coffee shop until it fizzled out. We then headed back to the van for a quick dinner and then made our way back into town where we parked ourselves up at another Speight's Ale House to watch the Rugby World Cup semi-final! The next morning we were meant to be heading out to Milford Sound by plane however due to the bad weather forecast it had been postponed to the next day so we made the most of not having to get up super early and headed to Yonder for a Sunday brunch. Just as we finished the heaven's opened and we opted to spend our afternoon at the cinema where Craig was delighted to finally get to see the Joker (Katy did not in any way whatsoever love it!). We practically ran back to the campervan after the cinema to avoid getting soaked and holed ourselves up for the rest of the night in the hopes that the weather would have improved for the next morning to make it out to Milford Sound. Unfortunately, despite a 05:30 alarm and getting ourselves ready we received a phonecall at 06:50 to tell us our flight had once again been cancelled but if we wanted to we could try again the following day. The benefit of long term travel meant we had a spare night that we didn't have anything planned for so we made our way to the reception to beg to keep the site for another night despite it being Labor Day weekend in hopes that we would be lucky the following day! With our day now wide open we went for a walk along the waterfront with a coffee and then spent the rest of the morning chilling. When we inevitably got a bit hungry, having had such an early breakfast, we grabbed some lunch from Fat Badgers Pizza Bar. We followed lunch with a fun game of crazy golf at Caddyshack City where Craig was able to redeem himself from his previous loss (although it was close!!). Our evening disappeared with some Netflix binging and we headed for an early night in the hopes we would be 3rd time lucky the next morning. Another 05:30 alarm, we phoned at 06:45 to check we would be flying but unfortunately, 3rd time was not lucky! They asked if we wanted to reschedule for the following day however, having run out of time to spend in Queenstown and unwilling to sacrifice any of our other plans for New Zealand, we cancelled, and a bit deflated we hit the road to Invercargill!
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