Guess Where We Are

Whilst I was sleeping last night...tucked up warm and cozy it snowed. This morning I woke up to all the trees and the tops of the hills covered in snow.......not long after I got a message from Rainie to tell me that the Remarkables (mountains) were absolutely covered.......I was excited. I also found out that Te Anu was completely snowed in.....in some ways I was sad that we were not there in another way glad we weren’t stuck. None the less ....how lucky are we to have all this magical white stuff that just makes everything look so wonderful.

The day wasn’t without incident one of which was rather scary....but that is another story. We reached Arrowtown around midday....what an amazing town......it reminded me a bit of an alpine cowboy town for some reason....there is a lot of history there being .....a gold mining town a ways back..the Chinese settlement was really thought provoking.
The Main Street is quaint and really interesting except for all the cars parked along the narrow road...spoiling any decent photographic exploits. I had to listen to Sleepy moan about it for ages....sigh!
We had a bite to eat and then hopped in the van for our next leg of the journey to Wanaka.

The first thing we did when reaching Wanaka was stop in for a cuppa and shortbread with Snowy. We got to see her beautiful garden with so many abundant blooms....I have to call it Snowy’s Heaven...what with the view and the flowers........and..........here I have to mention the shortbread.......which after my trip to Scotland last year I have become quite a connoisseur of Shortbread and I have to say that Snowy would give any Scots baker a run for their money...(I have already told her.)

Then it was time to visit the tree.......Sleepy parked the van a million miles away from it and we had to walk for ages ...and here am I still really full from nearly a full plate of shortbread.

I took so many pics of that tree...(it really is something......Sleepy told me that it has its own hashtag and FB page??????)this way that way every which way and I had been standing there for so long we got there about 5.30pm....and we were waiting for the sunset which was happening about 8.40pm......feeling weary we decided to leave around 8pm....however by the time we fartnarkled around and had to walk back to the van we got to see the sun turn the clouds and snow pink.......I think we got the best of it over the mountains rather than the tree....we didn’t get back to the van until 9 anyway.

It is almost overwhelming how beautiful this place is...all of it....everywhere is so different...everywhere has such a unique feel .......I am having such a great time...I just wish I didn’t feel so tired......although as Peter pointed out we are having pretty late nights and early mornings.....oh well I will sleep when I get home.

Really looking forward to catching up with some Wanaka Blippers in the morning.