Southern Laughter, 4 Isle St. $50 double as single, room only
Tuesday, March 5: Very sunny and warm with a bit of cloud turning up during the afternoon
GPS Tour
Was off to the DoC at around 10:00 this morning to see what I could do in or around Mt Aspiring. Unfortunately there had been an issue with security at the end of the road carpark, and there being no surveillance, my plans for doing the Rob Roy at least were quashed. Decided I would go down to the end of the road anyway, if not to walk, then to be in the company of the mountains. I had been warned that the road was a little “juddery”. Turned out it was completely shot to bits, so not much chance of risking the car for those 30 kms. Went back to the Rocky Mountain/Lake Diamond/Lake Wanaka views car park and marched up the hill from there.
Lake Wanaka, detail of the panorama
Passed a number of walkers on the way up and took a couple of brackets from about halfway up then continued right to the top where a bracketed panorama was on the agenda. Couple from Zürich, Switzerland asked me to take their photo in the meantime & I regaled them of my hike through Switzerland last year. Good thing I didn’t tell them about the previous tramp through all of Germany.
| GPS Tour: Diamond Lake Walk |
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Diamond Lake, near Wanaka
After arriving back at the car, I drove into Wanaka, stopping first at the Mt Aspiring view carpark (but no picnic tables) then to Wanaka itself where there were and had lunch there. Then it was down to Queenstown. Thought that although the prices at Puzzling World (founded 1973) were reasonable ($17.5) a visit would only be worthwhile with the appropriate models.
Had a look around Cromwell, but nothing much; the valley following (Kaiwara?) was all the more impressive, including bushfire damage. At the Lee Memorial the road seemed to be at an end very quickly, and there was no other sign of the monument. Finished off heading pretty directly to Queenstown. Found the hostel fairly quickly, very curious place; little parking, and most of the rooms have window fronts to the corridor necessitating curtains in all of them.
Spent the afternoon strolling around town; reminded me very much of Titisee with the lake or Willingen without, the mountains and the tourists, although most of them here seem to be from China (or is it South Korea?). Plenty of places to eat out (with accents on Thai and Korean) and settled on a fish’n’chip place (rather expensive @ $12) after transcribing another three days of the diary. Then it was back to the room for a shower.
Lenticular cloud from the deck at Southern Laughter Backpackers, Queenstown
Spent most of the evening chatting with Carmen from Hong Kong after she had almost set the fire alarms off by turning the hot plates on the stove red hot and trying to cook. As I always say, Chinese cooking is really just redistributing oil around the kitchen. Apart from that (for which she had bad rap from nearly all the other inhabitants) she was really quite pleasant, and a couple of photos of lenticular clouds in the sunset were taken to serious conversation.
