More Wanaka Singletrack and Warbirds...

We ventured out for what was to be an outing to Queenstown for a night or two.  While most people here in NZ seem to avoid it because there are so many tourists, we thought we would be able to make the best of it to find some good trails and camp for a couple of nights.  On our way into Queenstown, we stopped at Peregrine Winery for a tasting (or two) of their tasty wines.

 The roof of the Peregrine Wines' cellar was impressive...

And the entrance into the cellar...

We then ventured up the road to Gibbston Valley Wines, where we seemed to find our way into the Cheese tasting shop next door and enjoyed a nice cheesy picnic over more wine!

 A perfect picnic at the Gibbston Cheese tasting shop...cheese won over wine this time around!

Arriving into town we discovered the campsites to be full and congested, and at $50/night, not exactly a bargain!  We drove through town and it was obvious it is a beautiful area, but the frenzy of tourists was, well, quite overwhelming.  Long story short, we beat it out of town faster than most people can spell Queenstown and took the hour jaunt back to Wanaka.  It was a nice drive over the Crown Range, which is the highest paved (public) road in NZ.

 The road into Queenstown from Wanaka was impressive, this picture was taken at the top of the switchbacks below...very tempting to ride on the road bikes when it is "closed" for Winter...

As we drove back into Wanaka, we felt relaxed and at ease again.  There was a certain energy in Queenstown that we were definitely not attracted to!  After three more nights in Wanaka, and three more days of fun singletrack, and the Wanaka farmer's market tomorrow morning, we will finally be heading out and north, via the West coast tomorrow.  Wanaka has a lot of strong points to revisit, and possibly re-live.  Aside from the abundance of year round outdoor activities, they have an equal (if not greater amount) of local resources than where we previously lived in California, with only a fifth the amount of people.  They also have fantastic restaurants, an amazing local bakery, their own locally made ice cream, and rivers and lakes so clean and clear you can drink out of  them (and see the to the bottom). 

Great sculpture in Wanaka

It is about a 500 mile drive up to Nelson, which is on the very northern tip of the southern island.  "Sunny Nelson" as she is known is a beautiful spot with sunny weather and (so we've heard) lots of good riding.  It is also backed up to the Abel Tasman Park which, from the pictures, looks amazing.  From Nelson, we will be taking the InterIslander ferry back to Wellington for a couple nights to visit Graeme again, then north to Rotorua.  Rotorua marks the last of our list of potential places to live as we managed to visit it twice the last time we were here.  The mountain bike World Championships were held in Rotorua a few years back and the single-speed World Championships are being held there this year.  It is a geographic hotbed as well, so to speak, as there is an abundance of geothermal activity which is awesome and translates into amazing hot springs to soak in everywhere...we like that!

This afternoon we ventured out to the Wanaka Airport, which is just a few kilometers south of town.  They are ramping up for their infamous Warbirds Over Wanaka, international airshow, which is in a couple weeks on Easter weekend.  It would be something else to be here to see that!  For today we ventured to the airport cafe and watched a fluster of activity ranging from the variety of helicopters buzzing around us like bees to the skyjumping airplane we watched do "laps" to 15,000 feet before booting a handful of skyjumpers out and watching them fall like rocks from below, before their parachutes deployed.

 Skyjumpers landing overhead...

The cafe at the airport had great food as well...I had a fantastically fresh salad with roast chicken and bacon in it and Z had a lamb burger with grilled eggplant (called aubergine), zuchinni (called courgettes here), and hummus, all on fresh (locally made bread from Wanaka's own amazing bakery) ciabatta bread.  We sat on the porch of the cafe and watched all the activity before venturing over to the Wanaka Warbird Museum.

 Inside the Warbird Museum...A Hawker Hurricane...

DeHavilland Vampire...

New Zealand had over 100,000 soldiers in World War I (for only having a population of 1,000,000 at the time this was a lot of soldiers) and over 200,000 in World War II (at this time their population had only grown to 1,500,000), which accounted for 2/3 of all men.  Needless to say their efforts contributed to "winning" the war.  It was neat to see the warbirds in the museum however it was especially neat because a couple of the planes were being prepared for the airshow, so the models were actually still fully operational!

As much fun we have had traveling around for a full month now, we are excited to come to a stop!  The scenery has been amazing, the trails have been fantastic, the food has been memorable, and we are ready to slow down enough to be able to call/Skype our lovely friends and family at home a lot more as it is near impossible while on the road.  Getting into a bit more of a normal schedule sounds quite nice as well!  So, good thoughts and enjoyment of the next couple weeks before this part of the journey wraps up to begin the next chapter...whatever that may hold, we are excited to find out!