B-Day

Some of you may be wondering what Tim meant by his comment on yesterday's post. Well before Erin and I came to NZ, Tim and Jackie bought us some travels gifts including travel pillows, and some games. One of the games is Canasta. We were so happy to have gotten the gifts, but when we opened Canasta to play here in NZ, the rule book was too big and we passed. Low and behold, Tim decided to give Jackie Canasta for Christmas this year. In the end all Tim talked about was playing Canasta, but the 3 of us who actually owned the game weren't interested. It became the running joke. Hopefully when we get back to Boston, we can have a few games.

While the drive to Queenstown was long, it was also scenic. We stopped for dinner in Wanaka, a town that’s about an hour in Queenstown. We settled into our hotel quickly and pondered over the next day over a glass of wine (in the hotel lobby as the walls were thin and we got in trouble for talking too loud!)

The next day started early with breakfast at a tasty café. We then rode the gondola up to take in the views of Queenstown. We of course took in a few rides on, my favorite, the luge. Jeremy and Tim seemed pretty quiet as we got closer to lunch, but that’s because they had signed up for a BUNGEE JUMP!

We grabbed a quick lunch before heading off to the Kawaru Bridge. This bridge is the site of the first commercial bungy jump 20 years ago. It's 43 metre's in height which is much smaller than the Nevis jump which I had done last year during our travels with Jochen and Susanne. There were lots of spectators, but we didn’t have to wait long for the boys to jump! They both did a great job, had a nice water touch, and enjoyed the experience.

Jeremy pre-jump, he's jumped before so he was only half nervous

Jeremy jumping...what form

Water touchTim jumping - Go Tim Go! He did a great job too!

After the jumps, we headed back into Queenstown and drove up the Remarkables. This is one of the ski fields in Queenstown and the drive is rather scary as it's 13km on a curvy dirt road with no barriers. We finally made it to the top, took some pictures and then started our slow decent down.

Since we had got our bungy out of the way, the night was filled with drinks in Queenstown. We did our best to find some happy hours to get some cheap drinks and were successful at a few bars. One of them we got steak sandwiches and a Speights for $12...WHAT A DEAL!

We didn't stay out too late as we needed our strength for a big day tomorrow.