March 19, Part 2--Last Day of the Australia/NZ Tour

If you are in love--that's a good thing--that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.  --John Steinbeck 

    We slept in on our last day, a glorious treat. After breakfast, we made the trek downhill to town (after getting the full scoop on the bus that would bring us back up the long, steep hill). We walked along the lakefront, then headed back uphill to ride the Skyline Queenstown gondola. I was not all that terrified--it was a lovely ride up with a worker who told us about the other things we could do--ride the luge, mountain biking (the trail is insane), bunge-jumping or even para-gliding. And here I was proud of myself for doing the gondola! Truly NZ is a thrill-seeker's (do stupid, dangerous stuff) paradise. 

Note the bike inside the gondola

Note the parasail in the background between us--
we saw many taking off

Awesome views!

    On the way to the gondola, we passed an indoor skydiving place. Despite the lovely offer, we passed:

    Riding the gondola back down gave us a clear view of how steep it is! We roamed through some shops and enjoyed another Pad Thai lunch. A bit more wandering led us to the last pub visit of this tour, where we capped off our good lunch with a beer. Then we rode the bus back up the hill--we agreed that we would have paid a much greater fare just to avoid that uphill hike. 

    After some much-appreciated downtime, we joined the group for our "Last Supper." It was a lovely meal but much too loud and long. We had a group photo afterwards. Hopefully our guide will post it on the group photo site eventually. 

    Words to live by:

    Tomorrow we fly to Bali!!!!

        Leta