Heading to New Zealand

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Our flight was at 10:00 am with Air New Zealand. They fed us a nice lunch of Chicken Pot Pie with asparagus, pasta salad, and a brownie. We are getting spoiled with the international air travel. The flight went well and it was amazing flying over the South Alps heading into Queenstown. We got through customs fine. Just a scrub down of my hiking shoes as there was some dried mud on them and they are very careful about what comes in country. The agent that handled that was originally from New Mexico. He came here 7 years ago and decided to stay. We have met several Americans who have stayed. Some with work visas for one year and others made it home. I can understand the interest to do so. Both Australia and New Zealand are beautiful.

We got our rental car and Steve did a great job driving. It is weird to actually drive on the opposite side of the road as well as be behind the steering wheel on the opposite side of the car. Also, when we put the turn signal on it is actually the windshield wiper so that took a bit of getting used to. We explored Queenstown a bit before heading to Wanaka on the Crown Ridge Road.

Checked into our room at the Wyndham Resort. We have a decent sized room with a kitchenette. Also grills outside our room in a courtyard as well as a pool with slide and a hot tub. So we decided to buy groceries at the local market. I drove back to the resort and we arrived safely.

We ended up eating out at the Ale House across from Lake Wanaka. It is huge lake and is well used. Steve had ribs and I had a nice piece of locally caught salmon. Then back to hit the hay as we booked a FCF (Flight, cruise, flight) to Milford Sound in the morning. The temperature today was in the high 70’s.