real fruit ice cream and wine before 9AM

the TB summary-

puts me in  mind of some of my mother's "journaling" back in the days when we traveled together- I told her 'I take the photos and you write the notes' - the trip notes started out with enormous detail - like what they fed us on the plane and our seat numbers etc...and as the trip went on we got to entries where the day would say "dinner: V-chicken, J- fish"  so I gave up on her recitation of the trip and just kept taking more photos so I could remember things later.  to this day I still take sign photos and brochure photos to give me context for the overall flow of the trip.

but back to the TB summary; this was another long day on the road with a fair number of stops and here is his complete day in a "nutshell" LOL

12/13: Bkfst @ Distinction Nugget Point Hotel. Motorcoach cruise through Southern Alps with various stops & side hikes: Queenstown – Cromwell – North Bend Station (wine tasting at 9 am!) – Wanaka – Haast Pass – Fox Glacier. Dinner @ Fox Glacier Teweheka Hotel.

so you see what I mean- LOL- we were off this morning from Q-town heading mostly north through the southern Alps and up along the west coast of the south island (known for its WEATHER! and not in a good way)

since I probably won't get through the whole day in one post here is the map of the morning-

 

our first stop out of town- was the original Bungee Jumping bridge that put NZ on the extreme sports map so to speak!

 

looking both directions from the Bungy jumping bridge- which was an older bridge which had been replaced by a newer one (shown in the photo above)

 the next stop was just up the road at a place where you could see some of the hydro electric generation along Roaring Meg stream-

NZ is quite advanced in the sustainability area- they generate an amazing percentage of their power from "clean" sources - and they are  nuclear free zone- the whole country is a nuclear free zone... this has caused some issues with the US because they won't let our war ships into their territory on the off chance they are carrying nuclear war heads onboard... however - they do expect us to come to their aid in the event they are in need of defense forces from abroad... but no need to go there in this post-

by the way- off on a tangent-  I took this photo from the moving bus - so not such great focus- but it completely shows this "land of the long white cloud" thing they have going on here in NZ-

anyway, on to the fruit ice cream stop- LOL- since we left so early we are in a need of a pit stop and this fruit stand (with fabulous roses outside the WC) is just the place-

 

 

in addition to the fresh fruit- and the ice cream made with real fruit- they sold all kinds of dried fruit and nuts etc... we were like kids in a candy store and barely made it back to the bus in time with our morning ice creams.  The real fruit ones are ice cream (choice of vanilla or hokey-pokey) mixed together in a special machine with real fruit which has been frozen.

so we are off... to the winery! where we do tastings very early - with nibbles to see the pairing of the wines with food-

a full service wine tasting room- they offered eggs from their farm as well-

I haven't yet mentioned the "green folders" but now is the time to catch you up on them- our guide Mike was truly a professional- he knew massive amounts of information about his home country and was really desirous of making sure we each got as much of it as possible-

to that end for each leg of the journey he put together folders with detailed information and brochures and articles about various things relevant to each segment of the journey- these would then be passed around the bus for perusal by the nine of us along the way.

I bring this up because in the green folder for this day is a photo of Shrek-

Shrek captured the public's imagination in 2004 after he evaded the annual shearing roundups for the previous seven years by hiding in caves on his farm on the South Island. When finally found, he was clad in an astonishing 60 pounds of wool.

Shrek was one of about 17,000 sheep on the the 27,000-acre Bendigo farm in the small town of Tarras. Shrek was able to survive the winters and avoid detection by moving about a series of sheltered caves and by munching on small native shrubs.

As well as laying claim to being New Zealand's woolliest sheep, Shrek may also have been its oldest. Most sheep live for no more than six years before being slaughtered. Shrek died in June 2011 at age 17 from an illness- he commanded up to $16,000 an appearance and was used for many charity fundraisers. Shrek's ashes were scattered atop Mt. Cook, New Zealand's tallest mountain.

here is an Internet photo of Shrek:

and we passed right by the farm he was raised on and the hills where he hid out for all those years...LOL- just up the road from the winery which was located on the Tarras-Cromwell Road...all before 11 AM!

RIP Shrek!