Five Mile Creek

Today we wanted to hire mountain bikes and explore the surrounding area. Mountain biking is huge in Queenstown, they're everywhere, and we wanted to see what the fuss was about. Tom went for a run first thing and then we both did a circuit on a sports field near the campsite, watching paragliders soar overhead. It really is a very adventurous place to be.

Feeling very refreshed, we went into town to the Fergbaker bakery, which is the best and only real bakery we've found in the whole of New Zealand so far. Bread seems to be really awful from most bakeries over here for some reason compared to the UK, but ah well this place was the best we've found. We got some supplies for the day and then headed to the mountain bike hire shop. We chatted to the guy and decided to hire them in the early afternoon, so spent the morning chilling in the town, searching for a top that Izzi wanted and drinking coffee next to the lake.

We picked up the mountain bikes and headed off on our chosen route. It was great fun cycling again and for the first 8km or so it was either road, or what would be "steep cliff path only for walkers" in the UK, which made for tricky cycling! The next bit up to the top of a good downhill section was all switchback turns up a hill, and Izzi had a strop halfway up when she realised she'd bitten off more than she could chew, and vowed as she pushed her bike up the hill to do more cycling in Guernsey (this was in retrospect, at the time she vowed never to get on a bike again and was much more unreasonable).

We then went down the track which popped us out just opposite a bike park. We spent the next few hours here, on the hills on the edge of the lake, riding the tracks through the forest and generally wearing ourselves out at the steepness of the tracks and how rutted they were. We rode back later that evening feeling exhausted but pleased with the days efforts, it was a great place to ride.

That evening we got changed and headed out into town to go for our first evening meal out in quite a long time. We found a steak restaurant which had great reviews so decided to go there. We ordered 2 very reasonable steaks (some of them were veeeery pricey) but when the waitress arrived and gave us the food, something seemed wrong. She had said the correct meals as she put the plates down, but Izzi had received a HUGE fillet (like really huge) that somewhat differed to the rump that we thought she'd be getting, and that the waitress had said, and Tom received something that nether of us knew straight away but thought was a sirloin. Not wanting to question the waitresses judgement, we tucked in happily. It was a fantastic meal! We only realised at the end of the meal, that the table next to us seemed to have much smaller steaks, that looked suspiciously like what we should have had as they had ordered the same things as us. We were worried that the bill would be sky high but luckily it was just as we'd ordered and we left feeling pleased yet confused, wondering if someone had received our meal instead of their own...Read more