Day 9 Monday, March 17

We leave our hotel early to go to the Kiwi & Birdlife Park in Queenstown.  The owners of the Park have a special arrangement with Holiday Vacations to serve our tour a scrumptious breakfast!  Lots of fresh fruits, assorted fresh homemade breads, whipped honey, whipped butter, and more all served up on their own beautiful handmade pottery. Wow!

 As we are finishing our delicious breakfast, one of the Parks experts tells about some of the Park's inhabitants....

 We have the rare opportunity to experience New Zealand's most iconic bird; specially designed nocturnal houses allow us to view the illusive Kiwi during the day.  A Kiwi egg!

The owner of the Park gives us a personal narrated tour of the Kiwi & Birdlife Park.

                           ...a fascinating tree..

                   Rosemary, Donna, Erma, Mary, Norma, Althea....
enjoying ourselves on this tour!

On our way to Arrowtown, we stop at the "Birthplace of Bungy", where A. J. Hackett (the inventor of bungy jumping in 1988) still entices intrepid souls to fling themselves off this bridge!

 No BooBoo!  Don't do it!!

 BooBoo didn't have any money and I am sure not going to give her the money to plummet toward that flowing river!

So BooBoo went into the gift shop and found herself a new friend instead!  Love those flipflops!

We proceeded on to Arrowtown, one of the most picturesque and best-preserved gold mining towns of the area.

...a real tourist trap, with many gift shops and eateries...

...and restored old buildings from the gold-mining days...

We first saw this "post crochet work" when we were in Devonport (across the harbor from Auckland) and here we see it again in Arrowtown.  Interesting!

When we get back to our hotel in the afternoon, we decide to take the water taxi (which we can board at The Rees hotel pier, which is accessible by the stairway near our room) into Queenstown,

do some souvenir shopping, have dinner, then walk back to our hotel on the pathway that follows the shoreline of scenic Lake Wakatipu.
We notify our hotel's front desk that we want to catch the water taxi and proceed down to the dock behind the hotel.

We are waiting on the dock and looking toward town, thinking we will see a ferry-type boat approach from town to pick us up.  After a few minutes we hear a "small" boat approaching our pier (from the opposite direction from which we have been watching!)....and yes it is our "Water Taxi"!

 Wow! How cool is this!  All part of the adventure!
Come on Jeanne, our taxi is here!

 Jeanne looks like a movie star, not a care in the world!

 We cross Lake Wakatipu  to pick up another passenger from another dock....

Once we arrive at the city dock in Queenstown, we walk to Fergburger, the most popular burger place here, and likely the largest burger I have ever seen!

 These burgers live up to their reputation!  They are made on a 6-inch bun (w/a 6 in. meat patty!) with all the trimmings you want!  That is why there is a long line of customers waiting to get one! 

What a feast!  It was well worth the wait!  We took our burgers to the park near the city dock and found a covered bench, since it had begun to rain.

After eating our Fergburgers, Norma, Donna, and I walked to the Queenstown Gardens, in the light rain.

By the time we had walked around in the light rain for awhile, we decided to forego the walk back to our hotel along the shoreline of Lake Wakatipu, and instead walked back into town to catch the hotel shuttle.

When we got back to the hotel I guess everyone had the same idea...do laundry!

Only two washers and two dryers, so there will be a wait.  But hey, we're on vacation!  What else do we have to do?

Tomorrow we head up to Christchurch, N.Z.!