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A day of travel, mainly. Ben kindly gave us a lift to the airport at some ungodly hour so we could get our flight to Queenstown via Christchurch. The airport was so small that Ben initially drove past it and had to reverse back! We were the first to arrive at 5.30am, in fact the airport wasn't actually open. A lady took pity on us tired looking vagabonds and offered to check us in to get rid of our heavy luggage. We weren't asked for passports. In fact, she didn't even ask for our names, rather she knew who we were and where we were going. We've since been told that no Kiwi would've turned up that early, which might have been our giveaway.
Nice propeller plane to Christchurch, then a jet for the final leg. Unfortunately we went too high above cloud level to see the scenery, but did see some of the mountains en route.
Got to QT in the early afternoon, and a bus ride from the airport dropped us off at the Alpine Lodge hostel where Taffy Paul showed us our rooms and recommended some things to see and do.
After leaving the lodge we started wandering and were drawn to the gondola which took us up the mountain overlooking the lake for some scenic shots and spectating a rather underwhelming bungy jump. We came down to find some lunch and stopped in a crepe bar decorated with strange plastic toys before heading down to the lakeside to look for the shop where Ben said his postcards were sold (having forgotten to get any directly from him). Disappointingly, the shop sold them at $1.20 instead of the RRP of $1, and despite heavy haggling by Cerys, only a 5% discount was negotiated.
We wandered back to the hostel to check in and to have a cup of tea and a fresh baked cookie, before stocking up in the local supermarket on 'Scrummy mix' and other tramping snacks as well as brekkie for tomorrow.
We wandered back to town for our hike briefing; it was quite thorough & we were able to borrow rucksacks and rain coats which were useful additions after finding out that we were likely to get soaked at some point in the trek. We dashed back to get our hiking packs ready.
We took up on Taff's suggestion of a pizza and pint for $16 at the Irish bar in town, eating as much as possible to carb load and sleep well. We strolled back with contented sleepiness to the hostel and retired early, ready for an early start & long day tomorrow.
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