Day 335: Day Trip to Wanaka — Gondola + Luge Back in Queenstown

by Margaret · Published December 6, 2019 · Updated December 6, 2019

A third rainy chilly morning in that cozy bed with nowhere to be. I count this among the greatest strings of mornings we’ve had all year. Come ON!

Even the kids were enjoying the laziness, staying in bed til 9:30 reading.

By 10:30 Beeps came over and agreed to do a Part II of the oral history audio interview. We haven’t listened to these things yet but can’t wait to dive in. Now have an hour and 15 minutes of audio content that promises to be hilarious (for at least two listeners, that is, probably just those named Teddy and Margaret).

By noon we were on the road to Wanaka, a mini Queenstown-type goldmining town an hour north. It was pouring and gray but we decided to go for it anyway.

The road was impossibly curvy and mountainous, our car dwarfed by these cartoonishly huge but still intimidating green mountains, all dotted with thousands of sheep.

We stopped to take a pic or two.

We also stopped at the Cardrona Hotel, which I’d read was among the most photographed buildings in New Zealand. Like a movie set from a Western or a building in Frontierland.

Eventually we got to Wanaka, which it turns out was closing streets and sandbagging shops in prep for a rising/flooding Lake Wanaka.

We found lunch upstream at the Federal Diner. James and Willa read most of the time.

Wanaka is a place to go when the golden sun is shimmering on the lake and the electric-hued mountains. We’ll have to take Lonely Planet’s word for it. It was pretty but mostly rainy and cold and gray.

We needed an indoor activity.

By 2:30 we were pulling into one of the wackiest stops we’ve made in a while: New Zealand’s National Transport and Toy Museum. This is the “world’s largest private collection of aircraft, vehicles and toys” and, I’ll add, other junk.

Imagine four airplane hangars brimming with vintage stuff, all sorted by category. 50,000 individual items on display. Almost like the warehouse of a major Hollywood prop and set design company. There were sections of irons, phones, vacuum cleaners, jet skis, Barbies, cop cars, fire trucks, snow blowers, armored trucks, microwaves, etc. Every category of stuff, from every decade in the last 100 years.

Aka heaven.

I loved it, my dad loved it. The kids were into the vintage kiddie rides and Teddy was having a blast identifying his favorite 80s toys/going down memory lane.

In one particularly great moment, a vintage train ride ate James and Willa’s coin — and they were so fired up they went all by themselves back to the museum reception to report the incident and try to get their due ride. The guy came out and got it working for them. I was so proud!

Here’s some of what we saw:

After that we headed back to Queenstown. The kids slept while we listened to a few episodes of The Daily.

At this point the sun was coming out. It was our last night in Queenstown and we decided we needed to see the view via the gondola — a must in Queenstown we hadn’t had a moment to do between rain and other scheduled activities.

It was now or never.

We rode a very, very steep gondola to the peak, then another ski lift to the peak peak to take a luge ride around the top!

We did this! Including Beeps!