Thursday, November 15

A somewhat less scenic version of the picture you saw on the main travel page

Breakfast in our Novotel, then out onto the surprisingly empty streets to wander through the little town. We stopped into a couple of bookstores and a pharmacy, also a touristy art gallery, where we did see a sheet-copper fish that would be quite appropriate for our deck wall.

Mark identified some restaurants for lunches and suppers—we had two full days here to go—and we wound up, after spending over an hour in a local internet outlet, in a nice pubby place called Dux de Lux, a brew pub really. After a pleasant lunch, we walked back to the hotel for our cameras, and walked in the little and almost totally unlabeled botanic garden, taking several, even many, pictures of The Remarkables, the mountains that form a lovely backdrop to the town.

Lake Wakatipu and mountains big image, small	Looking back toward town big image, small	Lake and mountains big image, small	More lake and mountains big image, small
Yet more lake and mountains big image, small	Huge Rhododendron in bloom big image, small	Mark shoots Araucaria big image, small	Araucaria araucana cone big image, small

The botanic garden was pleasant, but surprisingly unphotogenic. I did get that shot of the spectacular Rhododendron in flower—it was spring, after all—and we found a nice Pehuén (Araucaria araucana, the so-called “Monkey Puzzle”), growing much more luxuriantly than we ever saw it doing in Chile. It’s somewhat surprising that there are no Araucaria native to New Zealand. They are found in Brazil (A. angustifolia), Chile, Norfolk Island (A. excelsa), New Caledonia (many species), Autralia (A. cunninghami and the Bunya-bunya, A. bidwilii), so that New Zealand would seem to be a natural. Maybe much too isolated, even in dinosaur days.

After a nap, we went back to the same internet outlet (not a café by any means), and then to a restaurant where we were sated but I at least was not impressed enough to note the name. Mark says it was called Prime. After checking whether an interesting bookstore in town might be open after we ate—it was not—we went back to the hotel, read, and turned in.