New Zealand Day 11: glider & wanaka

Woke up and packed up our stuff and were on the road by 9. Picked up brekke from McDonald's to eat on our two hour drive out to omarama for Matt's glider flight (happy birthday). Passed through a bunch of vineyards on the way but we were pressed for time so didn't get to stop.

Made it 10 minutes early, met his instructor and went down to the grass runway. He got fitted into his parachute and put into his glider and before long was being tied to his tow plane and was off. 345$ for 30 minutes. I went back to the office and waited while he mostly flew the glider after release up to touchdown finding thermals and different spots to generate lift. About forty five minutes later he was back and we were on our way to the west coast. As the glider flight was a 4 hour detour we stopped for lunch in the town of wanaka. A lake town known for some hustle and bustle. Grabbed a deli sandwich and discussed our remaining itinerary. Next day is glacier day but the towns on the west coast are quite small with not many accomodations. So we decided to book a lake front room and enjoy the beautiful day in wanaka. Paid back the lavender farm lady who had no service for cc and just gave us our coffee and lemon cream cheese muffin by depositing what we owed into her bank account and then checked into our 1br with a kitchenette lake view chalet room. It was quite nice. We hung out in the room until about 6 when we started looking for a place to eat. Woodfords pizza truck.... Mexican... Indian.... settled on Thai. I got chicken pad Thai and matt got green curry. Oh so good. Brought our own bottle of wine for 5$ and enjoyed the food in the restaurant with no ac and no food airflow. 🤦‍♀️

After dinner we walked the lake and retreated to our room. Lots of driving tomorrow to fox and Hans Josef glaciers.