The Obligatory Roast Lamb Dinner!

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During our drive from Wanaka down to Queenstown we stopped off at the small but very pretty Arrowtown, with it's street lined with quaint shops selling all kinds of nick-nacks, but mainly all things sheep skinned from what we could see. After topping up the old supplies at the ubiquitous lolly shop (they call chocolate covered honeycomb, aka, crunchie bar, hokey pokey here. Love it!) we set off for Queenstown.
Checked into the kiwi camping ground (Lakeview, I think it was called) which was a short walk from the town. The facilities were excellent but it aggrieved us somewhat that they seemed to require us to pay for everything, including the showers, which were a dollar for 8 minutes! And that was on top of the $32 charge for the campsite!
Our grumbles about the money grabbing campsite were soon dispelled though when we took a walk into Queenstown centre. Its a great town, with an abundance of shops, bars and restaurants. We went for a stroll along Lake Wakatipu, overawed once again at the magnificent views of mountains in the distance.
The best way to see the views from Queenstown is from the Sky Gondola and we had a nice morning, ascending, snapping away like japanese tourists and sipping tea and eating cake in the very pleasant cafe at the top.
Queenstown is more of a party town than most other places in New Zealand and so there we were, wrapped up to the hilt to have our first night out. Don't think we've ever worn so many clothes on a Saturday night out in our lives! It was a good night, with lots of crackling log fires, a few speights beers and not too many glum kiwis, considering they had just lost the rugby to the french.
And of course, to nurse the inevitable hangover, what better way than to indulge in the famous New Zealand roast lamb? B-e-a-utiful! The amount of 'oohs' and 'aahs' that were emitted by our fat and full faces during the eating, you would have thought we were Michael Winner and AA Gill doing their Sunday Times reviews . .
A nice walk around Glenorchy, a small 'town' a few miles away from Queenstown was required to work off our roast, and again, more oohing and ahhing ensued, but this time at the wonderful views surrounding us. We attempted a drive to Paradise but the dear van could not negotiate the creeks so we had to turn back and thus ended up having a second night out in Queenstown. We also went to the Minus 5 Ice Bar and had a refreshing vodka cocktail whilst marvelling at the clever ice sculptures and trying not to stand still for too long lest we become one of them.
And so, on our last day we drove up to the Remarkables, a mountain range that is popular with skiers. Its a bit of winding road, 13 kms long, which can be quite hairy at times. Although we didn't drive right to the top, we got far enough to again take a few pics of the views out over Queenstown and then it was back into the warmth of the van to take another drive to Te Anau.

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