Thursday March 20, 2025

 Thursday, March 20, 2025

Good Morning Queenstown!🇳🇿 

We don’t have anywhere we need to be today, but we’re planning on going for a ride to Glenorchy. At breakfast this morning we ran into Phil and Colleen (The Manhattan College guy/ photographer ) They had been to Glenorchy yesterday and told us about a place they had stopped called Little Paradise. The owner, Tomas was an unbelievable artist, sculptor, woodworker, peacock farmer and gardener. So now we had a stop.

I follow @Miaandtheworld on Instagram. She has had great tips on what to see and do in NZ. Everywhere we’ve gone that she has suggested has been well worth it. She said there is a waterfront cafe, that shouldn’t be missed. We thought why don’t we pick up sandwiches for our trip to Glenorchy and have a picnic. The place is adorable and we got a table on the back deck.  We saw blueberry french toast go by and we were hooked. We decided to share a 2nd breakfast and coffees. 

It was soooo good. I spoke to the chef. I asked if the brioche was deep fried. He said no once it’s dipped in the egg custard it’s covered in butter and then baked in the oven. I’m going to try that when we get home!

Next off to Glenorchy! 

The road to Glenorchy as ChatGPT would say is one of the most picturesque in South Island New Zealand! I think we found and stopped at each one!

After several stops along Lake Wakatipu we found Little Paradise. It did not disappoint. The grounds were beyond interesting. Tomas who was Swiss, looked like a grey hairy Shaggy from Scoobie Do. Little Paradise was located right in the middle of the 45th parallel. It’s halfway between the Equator and the South Pole. No wonder we are a day later than home. At the entrance, Tomas had taken his wife’s car, covered it with cement and then covered it with rocks and pebbles. We knew we were going to love it! The house started out as a white cement house. Tomas had covered it with stacked logs.  There had been lots and lots of trees on the property that they had taken down and used the logs to cover the house. Inside the house, Tomas had covered the wood floors with stone. He built the furniture from solid pieces of wood from the downed trees. Everything was right off the land. He even had a small plant in the water dispenser on the refrigerator! 

There were water wheels and koi ponds. He had a rainbow and brown trout pond with trout almost 3 feet long. He does his own spawning continuing the life cycle. 

The peacocks roamed freely around the whole property. We found a feeding station and the peacocks flocked to us. I had met a German couple with limited English and they asked me if I had seen the  peacocks. I said “No not yet.” He said “But they didn’t open their legs.” We had quite a laugh over that! You could hear us say “Come on peacock open your legs!”

This is how he stacked the wood to create the outside of his house! 

He even built a treehouse with a winding staircase around the trunk. Jeff walked up!

Beautiful place to experience, it’s truly a Little Paradise.

Well, I have to tell you Susie took one for the team today. We saw a helicopter pad along the road. We said let’s pretend we are going on a helicopter ride. Let’s get Susie in the picture. Jeff rolled down his window to get Susie in a picture with the helicopter. and tried to put the stick of her picture in the slot of the window frame. It’s as if it was quicksand, in an instant Susie was gone! Until the end of time Susie will remain inside the doorframe of that Hundai Santa Fe. 

Finally we arrived in Glenorchy. In 1999 a flood came in and totaled the Glenorchy Shed. They rebuilt it shortly after the flood. We had a quick lunch at Mrs. Wooly’s General Store. Then walked over to the lake and shoreline. 

Susie’s only request of the day was to have a group picture of us at the red shed in Glenorchy. Since her picture was lost I said we’d figure something out:

                                Welcome back Susie!

Autumn starting in Glenorchy with the glacier looking on.

We had a quicker ride home with no stops. We freshened up back at our apartment and got ready for our last evening in Queenstown. Our guide Erik told us he and his wife had a Fish and  Chips place in Queenstown. We decided to try it. I had Bluff oysters and Steve and Jeff  had Blue Cod Fish and Chips.  We walked around the waterfront, there were street artists. One guy rolls his piano in and performs all his own music. It was fun to hear each night. 

         Just after sunset on our last night in Queenstown.

We had ice cream again at Patagonia and the line was even longer than the last time we were there…well worth the wait!

Good night Queenstown!🇳🇿💕