Queenstown - rain and shine

With heavy hearts we left Wanaka and made for the Queenstown area. Having heard Queenstown's reputation for being very full on, we had booked a hostel in nearby Arrowtown. The other benefit to this was it is nearer a winery we wanted to visit, it having been recommended by a Kiwi Chris had met at work earlier in the year. Happily the weather was still fine when we got here, and the hostel seemed really nice, with Arrowtown seeming a pretty, and peaceful, place. So we booked in for an extra night.

We found out the local bus service would take us straight past the winery, which was a bit of a result, so off we went. On chatting to an American girl at the bus stop, we discovered that this bus' view on timetables was even more open to interpretation than our bus at home! So mental note made to be early for the return journey, and be prepared to wait a potentially long time.

We got to the winery and had a tasting which was great. We then went to the bistro which was part of the place and had a most excellent "chefs choice" menu with four different wines to complement each course. And both the food and wine were fantastic. We could hardly move afterwards, but dragged ourselves out in plenty of time to wait for the bus, which happily was on time, and stopped for us - in fact we were the only passengers - a most successful experience altogether!

The next morning normal weather had resumed and it was pouring with rain. Chris went on a short run along the riverside and Andy on a longer one up a nearby hill to a view point. Where he viewed more cloud.

Later on, we drove out to Queenstown and found it to be, well, dull. We found some coffee, walked around a bit, found some more coffee, and walked around a bit more, mostly in outdoors/sports shops. Very sadly, Andy's trail shoes had (literally) fallen apart. The fail-safe-fix-anything duct tape had failed to hold them together, as had superglue, and his run on New Year's Day had been their death knell. In one of the outdoors shops we went in to to escape the rain, Andy found a pair of trail shoes, in the sale, the last pair of that type, in his size. Fate, you might think. We have discovered that, whilst everything over here is expensive, sports clothing is particularly so (and don't even get us started on Merino wool clothing!). However, in the sale, these weren't so. He even had a choice or two (Salomon or North Face) and went for the slighlty cheaper ones as they were just a little lighter. This whole decision took some time and energy so we recovered by finding another coffee shop.

So we drove out of Queenstown thinking "What that it?" Dude. The rain had stopped by this point, so Chris went out on a walk up another nearby hill whilst Andy looked after the bed. Later on we went in search of some beer and passed the American girl we had met the day before, again waiting for the bus! We then found a local micro-brewery - a happy result. Genuine real ale at last.