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Day 12 Queenstown - Wanaka

 Today we ventured off to explore Queenstown then on to Wanaka where we will stay for a few nights.

Our first stop was a local Hunny Shop (honey) where we had a look around and had morning tea. Just down the road was a special chair that has been built called The Peter Rabbit thinking seat. It was very nice and a great idea.




  



Next onto Queenstown where we visited the Kiwi park. The park has 2 shows a conservation and a Kiwi encounter. The lake that Queenstown is built around is massive. It just on forever.

The conservation talk was really good explaining what they are doing to keep various species healthy and survivable. Again invasive species have caused problems. The rat, stout and possums. (NZ is over run with possums and have develop a carnivore mentality which causes issues with local birds and eggs.)

                                        

                                                        Tuatara (Like lizard but not)
                                                                

                                                                Kereru (native pigeon)

The kiwi display was quite good and is specially darkened as they are nocturnal. A few of them ran about and foraged for bugs and such. The run quite fast and are quite a solid bird.

We walked about the rest of the park looking at various birds and such. Some we couldn't find at all. The Kea and the Weka were somewhere??? Lucky we saw them on our visit to Milford Sound.


Kaka


Ruru

Next we ventured off not exactly sure what we were in for. We took a road up the mountain on our way to Wanaka - boy was it a climb and steep with snakey curves and very big drop off by the side of the mountain. Elizbeth was less than happy and kind of freaked out at time - as you guessed she doesn't like driving near the edge of large cliffs.

We are not returning to Queenstown tomorrow for that and other reasons. The road works and traffic was terrible. This weekend there is a marathon event and other stuff going on so its packed out. Wondered why we couldn't get accom there even sometime ago we tried to book.

We will chill a bit over the next couple of days so may not blog till we have something cool to share.

Take care all

Rob & Liz


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