Our Great Adventure: Queenstown Day 168 5/03/2015

We're both sorry to be leaving Te Anau and the Lakeview campsite. It really is wonderful here and there is so much to do and see. We'd certainly love to come back and do some of the great walks including the Kepler, Milford and Routeburn. We took our time getting packed up having a leisurely breakfast (probably because we're both tired after yesterday). Before we left we took advantage of the wifi and booked the ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales in Chile. We've been trying to do this for months so we were very glad when we finally succeeded. It's not cheap so we opted for private room with outside shared bathroom. We'll let you know in April whether this was a good choice! The plan was to head back to Queenstown today, about 2 hours north of Te Anau, where we'd decided to stay on another campsite so we could access the wifi. We'd planned to have a fairly leisurely day and take gondola above Queenstown, enjoy the views and have ice creams. We had lunch at the campsite and then set off. The gondola station is very close by and we were soon on our way up enjoying views back down across Lake Wakatipu. At the top Simon spotted a short walking trail which took us through a lovely forest with an abundance of fungi, most of which looked unsuitable for eating, to a viewpoint across to Ben Lomond. The hill was apparently named by homesick Scots who emigrated here in the 19th century. From here we continued up to where the paragliders take off from and up further to the ridge. So much for a leisurely day! Diane was in her flip flops and had to be helped back down to avoid slipping on the loose gravel. After enjoying our ice creams we got the gondola down and wandered in to town to get a few provisions before walking back to the campsite. The sun was still shining and we enjoyed sitting out in the sunshine before it went behind the hill and the temperature dropped. We ate in the van before heading off to bed. The forecast doesn't look too good for the next few days so we've left our options on what to do open.