Exploring Wanaka, Tourist-Style

One of the great bonuses of having guests is that we get out and do touristy things. We spent a cool, blue-sky day traveling over the Crown Range and exploring Wanaka with Grams and Grandpop. The grandparents’ visit hit the peak of fall color.

We stopped for some pictures along Lake Hayes, drove over the Crown Range and then had a lunch at the Cheeky Monkey Café in Wanaka. After lunch we parted ways. Doug and Don went to the New Zealand Fighter Pilots Museum. Marcia, Colin, Liam and I headed to Puzzling World. We decided to pit age against youth. Liam and Colin were one team and Marcia and I were the other team. We raced each other through the maze. It took us most of an hour. Youth dominated age. Liam and Colin won by about 5 minutes. Then we explored the crazy exhibits, like the tilted room.

Doug and Don picked us up from Puzzling World and we head out for late afternoon wine tasting at Rippon Vineyards. As the grown-ups sipped wine, Liam and Colin played hide and seek. While we were sitting outside the tasting room, enjoying our wine and gazing over the vineyards in the late afternoon sunshine, a harrier swooped down and got entangled in the netting draped over the vines. Only one young woman was working in the wine tasting room. She and I put on some big leather gloves and she grabbed some clippers. We walked down towards the flaying harrier. Luckily, at the last moment, the harrier shook itself free and flew away. Phew! I had no idea exactly how we were going to free it without getting scratched and clawed. It looked big and fierce.

p.s. If any of our friends in the United States want to enjoy some Rippon Vineyard wines or other Otago wines, our new neighbors own Station Imports, a wine importing company that brings wines from the boutique vineyards of Central Otago into the United States. When Andy and Penny aren’t here in New Zealand, they are in Colorado Springs just down the road from Denver, our old home. Strangely, their daughter is attending Colby College in Maine and majoring in Biology/Environmental Science as I did. We discovered this connection at a Christmas party and even found we had some of the same professors (who were much younger in my day).