Lazy Bones Cafe on the way to Queenstown - a steep Gondola ride and thrilling luge run on Bob’s Peak

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Tuesday, 9th April - Day Six: from the Top 10 Holiday Park at Te Anau (pronounced Tee Anow) to Queenstown, 173 km (104 mls). Most of us stopped at Lazy Bones Cafe, an unusual cafe and craft shop about half-way to our destination.

The owner and his wife were both truck drivers and had driven huge trucks thousands of miles in New Zealand and the USA. Barry was a real character and full of great stories that he told us while we were eating toasties for lunch. In order to visit the Grand Canyon, he had to unhitch the trailer from the fifth wheel and drive his luxurious Peterbuilt truck to the entrance where the gate attendant didn’t know what to make of this huge vehicle. So Barry, (the Kiwi), told him it was a car and handed him the money for the price of parking a car and was allowed in.

Last year he asked his mate if he wanted to go for a drive with him. When his friend asked where, Barry said, "just around the States" and a month later, took his mate on a 2,200 mile road trip.

I should have asked what a “flapjack” was before ordering one for a take-away. The girl gave me a quizzical look but ordered anyway. Then I discovered that Barry was cooking some pancakes for us. They weren’t like the English ones, which are bars of oatmeal and Golden Syrup - I felt bad about cancelling the order but we bought two other lovely slices instead. The bars are called slices in NZ - are you confused yet?

At 4 p.m. we gathered to walk a short distance from the Holiday Park uphill to the Skyline Gondola Terminal for an evening of adventure and food. We took an extremely steep ride in a Gondola up to the top of Bob’s Peak and a further trip on a ski lift to reach the Luge. There were two tracks, one for beginners, which was the scenic ride down and one for the more adventurous. I did both and was fine until right at the end when the girl next to me practically fell off her sled and flung out her arm. I stopped so completely, thinking I’d bang into her, that I couldn’t get it running again and the next four people bumped into me and each other - so embarrassing! However, it was really funny and June and I couldn't stop laughing.

After removing our helmets, we had a steep climb upwards for a magnificent meal at the “Taste of New Zealand” buffet dinner in the Skyline Restaurant. June introduced me to a “brown cow”! Must be a Canadian speciality - Kahlua in milk.

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Photos

gorgeous scenery
from Te Anau to Athol

Sheep for Sale
at Lazy Bones Cafe

Lazy Bones Cafe
Barry's place

empty roads
beautiful drive

herd of deer
a usual sight here

"The Remarkables"
mountains on the other side of Lake Wakatipu

tending his dahlias
in Queenstown

Gondola ride
Bruce and June, our Canadian friends

view of Queenstown
wonderful and steep Gondola ride

Skyline Restaurant
top of Bob's Peak

Luge Rules of Conduct
No helmet
No shoes
No ride

Ready for the first ride
Ramona and Howard

Scenic and advance Luge runs
Riding the luge, a first for us