Azure much?

We woke up at Mountain Chalets Motel, and as we were packing we sang Happy Birthday for mother who turned 60 before checking out.

We had breakfast at Shanty’s Cafe in Twizel, and then backtracked forty minutes to to Lake Pukaki for a walk along the shore. The weather wasn’t as epic as yesterday but still a very nice walk – and given better fit and more time we could perhaps have walked around the whole lake but instead after an hour or so of enjoying the views we headed further southeast to Omarama.

Solving world problems

Lenticular clouds over Mt Cook

Black wood – and apparently not by fire

As we drove on further we stopped at The Wrinkly Ram cafe, which had Merino clothing (not any significant discounts though) and lambs for Juni to meet and greet. What they did not have was warm food so drove further into Omarama to some rather run-down place which served hot stone meat to parents joy while Mona and I had the salmon.

As the afternoon progressed we started looking for accommodation and found a surprisingly cheap stay at Lake Hawea Hotel (split level suite for 160 NZD) which we booked without really taking time to do research. Turns out the view was amazing – perhaps not Lake Pukaki but still among, if not the, best nature view I’ve had from a hotel room. The split level family apartment layout suited us great and to top things off the high-quality restaurant was 25m from our door.

Enough photos on lakes, so here’s a photo of dad taking a lake photo from the balcony

We had birthday dinner at the restaurant where parents had something mainly consisting of meat and I got something asian – all were happy and we ended yet another awesome day in New Zealand.