Today we picked up our hire car and started the drive to Queenstown. It was kind of a relief to leave Christchurch and I'm glad we hadn't planned to stay there any longer.

The trip to Queenstown took about 6 hours which we thought was pretty quick and didn't feel like long at all. Along the way we stopped at Macca's for some breakfast. Then at Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki for some photos. Both of the lakes were really bright blue and beautiful.

After the lakes we stopped at Puzzling World in Wanaka. It is a small amusement park type thing where there is a giant maze and some optical illusion attractions. The maze was fun and it took is about 45mins to work it out. The optical illusions were good too, but I think I liked the maze better. We continued on to Wanaka after that and stopped for an ice cream/smoothie and sat on the beach. The lake there was really pretty and I went down to feel the water which was quite cold. I started to get a bit excited when we got to Wanaka because we were getting closer to Queenstown and it was starting to warm up. It had been cold in Christchurch and I was worried I had severely underpacked.

We hopped back in the car and made the last part of the journey to Queenstown which involved driving down a steep windy road. It was fine though and we got good views of the town.

We found our hotel, Oaks Club Resort, without too much trouble and checked in. We actually have a view of Lake Wakatipu from our balcony so we are pretty happy with our room.

After a long walk into town (because we took a half hour detour by mistake) we found a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I had nachos and we shared a liter of margarita. After dinner we went into a pub for some more drinks. We stayed there for a while and then decided to head back to the hotel. The taxi driver teased us a little because apparently we were heading home when everyone starts to head out! But we were tired so we didn't mind too much. I think everyone goes out so late because it stays light for so late here. Honestly, it's light until like 10pm here. It's crazy.