Morning Everyone,

We have spent a day exploring Queenstown. We started with a trip up the big mountain. Claire wisely took the cable car while decided to walk - an hour later and I arrive very red faced. It was a lot steeper than I thought and there was some big drops. At the top we sat and watched someone bungy jump and a number of people para gliding. The view over the town and lake was pretty awesome.

At the bottom of the hill we went to the bird park and sat in the dark looking at kiwis for about an hour. They are such a dumb looking bird all bum and no wings. The rest of the park was full of endagered local birds - including the fattest pidgeon I have ever seen!!!

We left the park and wandered into town and went to the underwater observatory and saw diving ducks, massive trout and two eels. After that we scooted back up to the bird park to watch their 3 o clock show.

After that I had to endure an hours worth of shopping. Luckily Claire couldn't decide what to buy so it was quite cheap. We bought some tea and set off for the campsite at twelve mile delta. So that night we camped on one of the lord of the ring sets. After looking in a book I found out that was where they frodo and sam watched the olliphants. Just over the lake was where Boromir copped it.

The next day we drove to Glenorchy and went walking in the forest. It was deserted when we arrived and I was a bit nervous about leaving our stuff in the car. Luckily by the time we got back there were families everywhere. The forest was really nice but the views over the river were freezing (and more than a little windy). On the way back Claire took lots of photos over the plains of Isenguard (ps there was lots of lotr filmed around Queenstown - it gets less geeky after this).

In the afternoon we headed to Arrowtown. An old goldrush town where we camped for the night and did all the boring laundry/camera charging.

This morning we got up and wandered around the town and chinese mining town. We also saw the ford of Bruinen (something like that). Now we are about to drive 200+ miles towards milford sound. So its an afternoon on the road - tunes at the ready.

Mr P