A day by the lake

This morning was going to be our last day with the other girls. We all got up around 7:30am and got ready to go on a day trip to Milford Sounds, where we would all go our separate ways at the end. When we came to get on the bus, our names weren't on the list, despite signing up on the Kiwi bus a while ago and having a voucher as we had pre-paid that had been checked by Helly, who had said it was fine. It turned out, which we hadn't realised, that the voucher was for a different company and we couldn't do the trip through the Kiwi Experience. Lauren rang up the Kiwi Experience office and argued with them about how they should have told us and that one of their drivers had said it was fine. The office told us to speak to the driver. It turned out we weren't the only ones not on the list, although the others all had vouchers for the Kiwi Experience. The driver let them on and we then explained our situation to him. He checked his bus and he only had one spare seat. So we couldn't go. The other girls, who were already on the bus, got back off, telling the driver they wanted to say goodbye. There were tears and hugs all round as we said goodbye. So now Lauren and I are back down to a pair.

We went to the office of the company we had the voucher for and they were friendly and understanding and managed to get us into a trip tomorrow which was lucky as it is the only day we have left and the trip for today had already left.

So instead of the day trip we had a fairly relaxing day. We walked to the bottom of the hill and got the gondola up to the top. We went on to the viewing platform and got an amazing view over Queenstown, the lake and the surrounding mountains. It was a beautiful clear day. We also saw people bungying off a ledge from the top of the hill. We didn't feel like having a go.

We got the gondola back down and wandered through Queenstown back to the hostel to dump some stuff and then we headed out to Queenstown Gardens and had a stroll alongside the lake. We sat for a while at the side of the lake just admiring the view before continuing on our way. We wandered through the rose garden and back to the hostel. We grabbed some sandwiches we made for the day trip, a drink and a blanket and went and had a picnic on a grassy area on the lake front promenade. We sunbathed for about 2 hours and then headed back to the hostel to chill there for a bit.

At around half 6 we ordered domino's - $5 a pizza - went to collect it and then eat it sitting on a wall in front of the lake. We basically spent all day by the lake. Then we came back to the hostel to chill and get an earlyish night.