Before leaving town in a sparkling clean van this morning, we visited Queenstown Gardens which are located on a promontory into Lake Wakatipu. The Gardens were founded in 1867 so the trees are now enormous and include oaks and massive sequoias. We walked around town and window-shopped and then headed south.

We followed beautiful Lake Wakatipu for 40 minutes to Kingston, situated at the southernmost end of the lake. It is a great place for water sports, but its most loved attraction is the Kingston Flyer, a vintage steam train. Originally a passenger service, the Kingston Flyer operated from 1878 to the mid-1950s. Today it takes tourists on a 9-mile track while passengers listen to music from the 1920s. We caught up with the train after it left Fairlite for its return trip to Kingston. The engineer blew his whistle when he noticed me snapping his photo.

We had a tall black and a flat white at the Kingston coffee shop. Leaving town we drove across a wide, flat valley with the first straight road we've traveled during this trip.

Then we drove through Mossburn which bills itself as the Deer Capital of NZ because of all of their deer farms.   The deer look well fed and content; the poor things don't even know what it would be to live in the wild and fend for themselves.

We made a quick U-turn because we spotted a place which our friend Stu asked us to photograph. Being good buddies, we did just that.

After driving through rich farmland we arrived in Te Anau, which will be our base camp for our trip into Fiordland National Park tomorrow.

The town of Te Anau is on the shores of NZ’s second largest lake -- the largest on the South Island. Lake Te Anau is 38 miles long and 6 miles wide.

Our first stop in town was to Miles Pies, which has the reputation of making the best pies in NZ. Bob had a Venison Pie and I had Satay Chicken. They were yummy.