Wanaka to Te Anau (January 11)

Julia and I did a bodyweight workout in our room, and then we packed up and went into town for breakfast. We found an amazing place called Big Fig where we ordered a combo plate of veggies and beans and quiche as well as a wonderful fried egg gozleme — a Turkish flatbread stuffed with an egg and spicy tomato sauce. Very yummy!!

We stopped at the pharmacy to try to get some more Covid tests before picking Jim and Rachel up from their hotel.  We decided to head to Te Anou early in the day rather than spend more time in Wanaka. On the way out of town, we stopped to see the one tree in the lake — quite stunning.

We had a three-hour drive ahead of us and the weather was coming in — it rained for a lot of our trip and by the time we got to Te Anou it was windy and cold. We dressed in warmer layers and went in search of lunch. The pie place we wanted was sold out of pies for the day so we went to a place called Pizza, Cafe, Info. We didn’t need pizza again, but ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. It was chilly enough that we were the only people sitting outside and the food was super mediocre.

We decided it would be fun to ride bikes around the area. There is a new path called Lake2Lake that goes for miles, but by the time we got bikes we only had 2 hours to go before they needed to be returned for the day. We started off on a really flat path around the lake but were sorta tricked into believing it would stay that way. We quickly were on dirt and gravel paths that were much more hilly than we anticipated (or even wanted). It was good mountain biking but a little tough — confirmation that Kiwis have a different scale for judging what is “hard” than we do in the States. While we were out, the weather totally started to change — clouds cleared and the sun emerged. We had made the right choice to head south early in the day.  On the way back we stopped to check out what seemed to be a bird sanctuary, but without any signs and with the pressure to get back in time, didn’t really get much of what we were seeing. (The next day we would learn a lot about the significance of the Takahē recovery program we had stumbled upon.) 

 

We returned to the hotel to do some laundry and ordered Indian food for dinner. Julia and I did some yoga stretching and then walked to get food.  We ate in our rooms next door to each other (had switched from a family room) and watched the 2nd episode of Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Julia paused the show halfway through to go pick up the laundry and get me a Magnum White Bar!  Such a nice treat!