after four consecutive days of snow boarding, it had become too much (for me anyway), and we decided to trade in our last day, and get in an extra day of sight seeing. after seeing the spectacular views from treble cone, we decided to drive back through wanaka to see if there were any other sights to see (of course there were). it was a little cloudy to start off with, but the previous couple of days had been very sunny and clear, so we were hoping for more of the same.
we stopped at the scenic lookout point on the windy road just off the main road leading out of queenstown. there wasn't a spectacular view (bit grey and dull), but we could see arrowtown, and some more peaks, and a paraglider 
. we stopped there for about twenty minutes or so, then continued on our way to wanaka (and beyond) via the crown range road. along the way, we saw this huge bird (probably a kia) sitting over some road kill. we pulled over about 100m down the road (that was alf's idea 
), and walked back trying to get a picture, but it flew off and didn't come back. we just didn't have any luck with the kia's and our digital slr's.
just after passing through wanaka, we stopped at motatapu gorge, and snapped some pictures of the river and surrounds. there were a few bees around, and one kept following me. after about thirty minutes we moved on, we went to treble cone, but decided not to go up, and the road leading to mt. aspiring national park was/is not sealed (and alf reckoned it was one of the roads we weren't insured to drive on). so we turned around and headed back for other locations.
we stopped by the diamond lake conservation area car park, but there was a swarm of bees outside, all hovering around this one white car. we decided not to chance it, which was unfortunate, because the trails to scenic locations were relatively short (an hour or so). we drove to the next conservation area, mt. alta, and stopped there after making sure the bees had gone . the trails to mt. alta were long, 2-3 hours, so we decided not to stray too far from the car, and just wandered up the trail a short way. the place we were is called homestead bay, and the track we walked up was called minaret burn track.
we walked up a bit, and saw a herd of sheep, so we kept walking to get a closer look, but these sheep were of the shy variety. they kept running away, alf devised a plan to surround them, so we herded them into a corner, and took some pictures. they were moving pretty erratically, i was a bit worried that they might charge me or something, like "the running of the bulls" in pamplona . then once we had gone around them a bit, they marched down the path from where we just came (and would need to go to get back to the car). i turned around first, and started following the sheep () back down the path, they kept running away, every now and again, a few would run up the side of the mountain till none were left. as i walked past them, they were so frightened that they were running into each other, it was pretty comical.
when alf finally got back to the car, it was about 4.30pm, and we decided to go to lake wanaka to see if we could catch some kind of sunset. we got there around 5pm, but had to wait for about an hour or so for the light to fade properly, it was pretty cold out there too. luckily, the clouds split open a bit, and we got some nice shots of the fading light.
we had dinner in wanaka, and after a bit of wandering around, settled for thai-toko (a thai and japanese place), we had chicken satay sticks for starters, i had a pork katsu don, alff had chicken teriyaki (which he didn't like that much). for drinks, i had a tall black (definitely not my favourite), while alf had a cardrona gold (he wasn't overly impressed either). the service wasn't great at this place, and we tipped them appropriately .
more sightseeing planned for the next day as we headed for milford sound.
#33 dtra (david tran)
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