Fun in Fiordland

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Heeeeey everyone!

Just a brief update as it hasn't been that long, but here's what we've been up to the last few days. Hope you all enjoyed the pictures from last time...it took us 3 hours to upload them all and they're not officially on snapfish so if you haven't gotten a copy of them from me, let me know and I'll send you a link. OH yeah, and just in case I wasn't clear, we titled the last entry Ben-E-dryl because the sandflies here rather irritating and have taken a liking to Ben and my sweeeet American blood.

Okay, so after setting up camp in the Wanaka internet cafe, we went for a nice long walk around the lake and got a taste for some of the lovely architecture of NZ expensive lake homes. We met a woman who was actually making a movie up there and when you see our pictures, you'll understand why it is such a wonderful place. We also heard that Mission Impossible 3 makes a few references to the lake. Let us know if that is true please...

Monday morning, we got up, expended some energy before driving over to Puzzle World. We had not a clue what we were in for. The lawn of Puzzle World is complete with a leaning tower that leans more than the Tower of Pisa as well as a clock that is running backwards, starting from the strike of midnight from the year of 2000. The museum itself is composed of two parts, the Illusion Rooms and the Great Maze. We walked through the Illusion Rooms first, looking at incredible holograms, the room of faces where famous peoples' faces, like Lincoln, Chruchill and Einstein, seemed to follow you as you moved left to right, side to side, and then to another room where you felt like you were on a slant and you were completely disoriented. It was really hard to describe. There was also a room that distorted your perception of size, utilizing many of the methods that were used in the making of the Lord of the Rings Movies. The other part of the museum was The Great Maze, where the object was to make your way through a 1.5 kilometer maze, passing through 4 towers in the corners, and then making your way back to the start/finish line. A sign said that the average person walks around 3.5-5 kilometers while trying to get through and it took us 47 minutes, so you do the math. It was both wildly entertaining and frustrating, but in the end, lots of fun. We then spent the next hour or so playing with the puzzles decorating the tables in the museum cafe. Ben took such a liking to one puzzle in particular that he bought it!

Unfortunately, the next morning we had to leave Wanaka. On our way, we stopped and explored the city of Queenstown (briefly) during our 3 hour drive to Te Anau. Again, the scenery was absolutey breathtaking and we took plenty of pictures. We are in Te Anau now, right in the heart of Fiordland. Yesterday afternoon, we took a 2 hour walk around the lake, passing through the wildlife center where we saw a few interesting birds. Today, we went for a 3+ hour hike along part of the Kepler trek to a hut on Lake Manipauri and if it wasn't for the pesky sandflies that do such damage, we would have loved to have had lunch there. We opted instead to dine with the ducks at a lovely viewpoint along the way instead.

We leave for Dunedin, Lake Tekapo, then finally Christ Church tomorrow and it is weird to think that we are leaving for OZ a week from tomorrow. Still having an incredible time and wish you could all see the cool things that we're seeing.

I'm desperate for celebrity gossip, as I just realized while catching up on NZ gossip magazines while Ben got his hair cut so please send anything you got!! Did Brangelina have the baby yet?

Miss you all,
Erica and Ben

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Comments

[shellbell]

emers!
Hey emers, sounds like you are having such an amazing time! wish we could rendezvous like we did in sicily!!! have tons more fun for me! xoxoxo