Day 45: Arrowtown to Queenstown

25km, 5 hours.

It's that same old story, we are one days walk away from a rest day, two in fact! That means one, motivation to walk is low and two, you just want to be able to teleport yourself there.

I think we spent a fair bit of time at Goldie Cafe in Arrowtown before we even contemplated moving on. We were all whinging until we hit Millbrook resort & country club and it was so fancy and upper class that we felt like we were homeless trespassers just by the state of us and the trail actually passing through.

We found a skateboard on the footpath so naturally I jumped on it for a ride though I should of realized skating with a heavy pack isn't the easiest for balance plus my injured foot.

I survived the skate much better than Ivan however.

Back into the golf course, some young green keepers came past on their buggy. I hailed them down and asked if Laura and I could jump in the back with the sand. 'for sure!' they said and we were no sooner off being ushered around the estate.

All together at 10am we decided that slightly off trail a couple of kms was a Mora winery so it would be wrong not to go and do some wine tasting in it's beautiful grounds. And we did. 5 filthy smelly hikers being given a private tasting and all of us pretending like we know about wines. The bucket wasn't even used once we weren't about to spit out wine!

Now all a little happy and mostly tired, the 20km still to walk to Queenstown became even less appealing and the $2 bus fare to Altitude Brewing in Frankton more so.

I was so torn but i decided to walk it along with Laura, while the other 3 and our 5 acquired wine bottles you end up being guilt tripped into buying, caught the bus.

I walked alongside Lake Hayes and was passed by all these fit good smelling guys out running while I'm smelling of 5 day old sweaty clothes. 'i don't normally smell like this!' is what I wished I could say to everyone who passed me.

I passed a rope swing from a tree and if I wasn't by myself i would have done it for sure. I messaged the family chat because every other rope swing I've done with Jared has ended with me being winded badly, or near severely injured. He sent through a pic to remind me of what happens when i do rope swings... I laughed a lot.

This was me on our 5m cliff swing into the Albert River back at Beauy. 20 years later i can still remember the pain and the laughter when i resurfaced.

After 3.5 hours I rocked in to Altitude Brewing - the coolest Brewery and joined the others for an afternoon of beer sampling and one of the most delicious fungi and prosciutto pizza I've ever had.

David, Ivan, Conny and I had so much fun at Altitude with all the locals on a Friday afternoon. Reluctantly and getting more tired and craving a wash we decided we better go get the bus to our hostel. We waited at the bus stop for over a half hour but the bus never came so evil Ivan and Conny grabbed David and my packs and convinced us to go back to the brewery. We were having two days off after this anyways.

We were extremely lucky to get the last dorm room in all of Queenstown that weekend in fact any accommodation at all as it was Waitangi long weekend and Fat Boy Slim was playing a big gig.

Showered we headed out for Indian for dinner. Having flavour and spices when you havent had them in forever is the greatest thing. The waiter asked whether we wanted Kiwi hot or Indian hot and while I am completely happy with my choice, Ivan bit into the hottest pepper and we gladly watched him suffer.

Ren x