Wanaka and Queenstown

Queenstown and Wanaka are in a little pocket of NZ and are surrounded by mountains, so while most of NZ has had the coldest summer anyone can remember, these two amazing little towns have had beautiful weather.  Queenstown is just north of a huge lake:

But as pretty as this is, Wanaka, north over a pass from Queenstown, quickly became my favorite place in New Zealand.  We got here the day before my birthday, and decided to stay at least until the day after my birthday, which would make it the place I'd spent the most time in so far on this trip.  Wanaka is also on a lake, and I really wanted to go on a boat for my birthday, but since it was raining in the morning, we decided to go to the toy and transport museum instead.  Luckily, while we were there the weather cleared up so we got to pedal around in this thing:

We tried calling a few places that rented out kayaks since the sun came out, but it seemed they had all made a quick decision in the morning upon seeing a cloud in the sky that the weather would not be good enough to work that day.  So we found a nice hike to do, which offered some good views:

After hiking we stopped at a little place we had been the day before for a beer/wine because they were having an after-party for a bike race in town.  Then for dinner we had mexican food since we heard that on your birthday you get something free at the only mexican spot in town.  This turned out not to be true, and mexican food is apparently so rare in NZ that we had to wait an hour and a half for a table!  But it was still tasty, and I had a delicious margarita to accompany our fajitas.

We checked a weather report and saw that it was expected to remain sunny and warm for the next few days, so we decided to stay longer, and possibly even spend Tres' bday here.  And since the next day it was sunny and warm and was my birthday in the states, where I was born so according to my mom was actually my birthday, I decided we should rent kayaks and go out to Ruby Island for a picnic.  This was a good decision.  Unfortunately the winds change quickly in Wanaka, so we were paddling against the wind both on the way too and from the island, but it was still a lot of fun.  We also found a nice spot where you can drive right onto the beach around the lake, so we spent afternoons here in the sun relaxing and reading, and even got in once though the water is very cold.