Day 7 – Glenorchy, Kiwi Park, Ice Bar

For the first part of this day, we decided to drive to the nearby town of Glenorchy to hike one of the nearby scenic trails. Sadly though, the weather didn’t co-operate today. A heavy cloud cover and light rain dampened our enthusiasm enough to call this visit off early. The surrounding mountainous areas look amazing, but today was not our day to admire them properly.

Is this European holly? We weren’t sure, but it looked like it.

Back in Queenstown, we headed to the Kiwi Park. This is a local zoo and conservation park. It was established many years ago on a former dump site, and now hosts a variety of local fauna for education and breeding programs.

An actual kiwi, in the nocturnal house!

The local native pigeons are little chonkers.

We got a closer look at a kiwi, albeit a taxidermied one. This guy is looking okay for being over 70 years old.

It’s a beautiful park, planted with a variety of local native species. They are progressively removing the introduced pine trees and replacing them with the native sequoia species.

Having thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the park, we turned our attention back to town. A visit to the sweet shop was in order.

Dinner that evening was “Japanese tapas”, at Tanoshi Cow Lane. Funny name, delicious food. Highly recommended as a dinner destination. We gobbled it up so fast that we hardly got in the obligatory food pic.

The final event for the day was a visit to Minus Five ice bar. The supplied coats and gloves are extremely necessary – the place is kept bitterly cold. Great cocktails, and a very (literally) cool experience.