4th February 2008

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4th February 2008
Today we left Te Anau and returned to Queenstown on our way towards Mount Cook. There has been a pattern to the weather now for the last few days with overcast and chilly mornings at 12 degrees and by the afternoon the weather clears and the temperature rises to 22 degrees. Today was no different except we also have had high winds which makes it feel cooler. We are treating today as a break day to catch up with washing, shopping, posting etc. The blog posting has been quite difficult for the last two days as we have had to go to a backpackers hostel to get access to the internet. As we had been out all day the main problem was gaining access to the backpackers hostel internet room after the reception office had closed and then getting back out of the place once it had been locked up for the night. Fortunately a nice young German girl let us in and we gave her the remains of our internet time.
We are also having to pay for internet usage by the hour and some places have been very slow to load particularly the pictures.
On our way from Te Anua we had a coffe break in Athol at the Lazybones Cafe and Gifts, which proved to be a very interesting place. Every gift imaginable was purchasable including a sheep stuck to a pebble with Athol written on it, bobbins for you sewing machine, an optical mouse and a fishing tool that cut line and tied knots and boot polish for every type of shoe plus many more useful items. The owner Barry collected model trucks and had them all on display, and took great joy in explaining them to anyone who was interested. he had collected one in every state in the US where he had worked. He and his petite wife both worked driving Peterbuilt trucks. The most amusing thing was the notice in their toilets, which basically said
“this toilet is not publicly funded, unlike our neighbours and we have to pay for water, paper, soap, emptying the sceptic tank, .....etc etc ourselves. If you are not one of our customers please leave your address so that we can come and use your loo when we are visiting your country”. There was also a cat who seemed comatosed but Barry assured me he was alive and not stuffed but choose to ignore any attention!Theirs was one of two cafes side by side in the middle of nowhere, I am so glad we picked theirs ,well worth a visit.
After all the chores were done Bob and I decided to go for a stroll along the Queenstown Time Walk which appeared to traverse Queenstown Hill. Wrong -it went straight up and straight down but was well worth the climb as the views over the Lake and town were stunning.

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Comments

[amy]

sheep game
Seeing all those New Zealand sheep reminded me of the NZ game we used to have where you had to buy and sell the sheep, how funny to see that there really are millions of sheep over there!!

[Lucy]

Tracking internet cafes
I hope you are recording all your internet access points they could prove very useful to other travelling bloggers! Can't believe the places you are going to and you can still post your blog everyday, amazing!