New Zealand - Part Two

From Te Anau, we drove Route 94 and Rt. 6 back to Queenstown and continuing on to Wanaka. It is about a 5 hour drive and very scenic. Wanaka is probably what Queenstown was like 25 years ago. A small town that is simply lovely; the anitithisis of Queenstown. It sits on Lake Wanaka and we stayed at a motel named The Moorings, 17 Lakeside Road. It sits just across the road from the lake and in a great location. Our unit had a small kitchenette, and a small patio overlooking the lake. It is about one block to the center of the town with a supermarket, restaurants and petrol stations. Wanaka is known for the semi-annual Wings over Wanaka Airshow. In the census of 2006, the town population was 6500, a 50% increase in just a few years. It is a sportsman's paradise with paragliding, mountaineering, hiking, mountain biking to name only some of the activities. We went out to the airport, about 10 minutes from town center, and there were sport parachuting going on while we were there. Air New Zealand services the town with twin turboprop aircraft. We visite the small but very good museum located on the airport in one hanger. They have some very interesting aircraft, including a Gypsy Moth biplane (all 90HP of it!); an several russian airplanes, a non flying but exdellent replica of a British SE-5 of WW I vintage, and the most interesting aircraft, a Hawker Hurricane which they fly at the airshow every two years. This airplane and the beautiful Spitfire saved England in the dark days of 1940 from the Nazis who were planning to invade Britain.

Near the airport is a place where you have the opportunity to shoot skeet or trap. I don't remember the name of the place, but we stopped and for NZ$15, I got a box of 12 ga. shotgun shells (25), the use of an over/under shotgun and had a real blast shooting trap. It has been a long time since I last did that, and it showed in the score. Ugly.

Leaaving Wanaka, we went North on Rt. 6 toward the Haast Pass, and some of the most spectacular alpine scenery anywhere in the world, including Switzerland. (That is another story which I'll write about in the future.) After going through the Haast Pass through the Southern Alps, the road takes you to the west coast. On our first trip the road was closed due to the snow, but this latest trip was in the Fall and it was magnificent.