Immigration and skydive problems + Continuing story of Active Trip

Hello alla at home and alla andra!

Today we had great weather in Queenstown no clouds, sunny and warm. I went to Cromwell by bus to visit Felton Road (one of New Zealands most renowned wineries). Arriving in Cromwell i rented a mountain bike for a few hours to bike the 10km to the vineyards and back. I called Gareth King which is the Viticulturist at Felton Road and got an appointment with him :-)

After about 1 hour of biking the last bit steep uphill, I got to Felton Roads beautiful vineyards situated at the hills of Bannockburn on north facing slopes. After a short tasting of a few of there wines Pinot Noir and Riesling, I meet up with Gareth and discussed the possibilities of work during harvest, which was not possible without a working permit :-(
After that he showed me some of the meticulously farmed vineyards (bio dynamic of course) that was closest to the winery. The meeting filled me with energy and I biked back in approx. 30 min, waiting for the bus i ran into this really cute (probably way to young) German girl from Munich. Unfortunately we got separated on arrival in Queenstown, haven't seen her sins :-(

Today My plans was to find out more about the working permits, which i did at the Immigrations office, they however told me that I should go to Dunedin where they had shorter handling times. But just to make shore i Called the Dunedin office and they told me that it was the other way around. Typical Government bureaucracy !!
After buying a new pair of shoes I got back into town eagerly awaiting my afternoon skydive. I was supposed to do a tandem jump from 15000ft (ca 5000m) with Nzone, but right after signing in and sitting in there office with a few other people all more or less nervous, they canceled the jumps because of to strong winds :-(
So now I have to hope for better weather tomorrow, as I re booked for 9.30 tomorrow :-)

15/2 09 DAY 7 Queenstown to Makarora

Left QT at 9.30 in the morning to go for a walk at Mount Chrichton. First thing we did was to run into a couple of gold diggers, prospecting for gold in a small creek. The walk was really nice with a few waterfalls and nice forest + views of Lake Wakatipu and a small gold mining hut built in schist (skiffer).
Then we drove on to Arrowtown for lunch pies, which tasted great especially the steak and mushroom one. After a Italian speed espresso at Joe's Garage, I visited Craig Potton's Gallery a very talented Kiwi photographer. Last but not least i bought myself the most expensive t-shirt I've ever bought, 100% NZ merino wool from Icebreaker. Looks like this
Leaving Arrowtown we headed up the mountains on a meandering road (serpentinvag), which took us to a small ski resort village called Cardrona, here we stopped for a pint of beer (not Baz though he was driving :-)

A couple of hours later we arrived in the metropolitan area of Makarora, Baz took us for a quick tour of the village in the bus (standing still at the same spot).

After settling in our hut's we had a nice stir fry dinner, then it was time for more beer at the local pub and also a few games of ping pong. I won most of my games but lost barley to Baz. Being at the midpoint of our trip we meet up with the group on the north bound trip to exchange some slightly exaggerated stories.
Good in spirit enhanced by the beers I, Shelagh, Callum, Zoe and Baz went for a nightly stroll to decorate the other groups bus. Being drunk or unlucky we unfortunately got spotted by some of the others on the way over to there bus, but walking all that way had at least motivated Shelagh who began spraying there bus with soap, Zoe followed up with a nice smiley of honey on the windscreen. Baz was mostly laughing because the other groups guides had already taken of the windscreen wipers, to protect them from danger.

Time to go to bed!