Cycle: 74km

Ahhh, another good night's sleep at the lodge. Unfortunately I woke up with my knee telling me that two tracks for the price of one wasn't such an awesome idea. I was fine going up or down stairs but swinging my leg through on a normal level pace was pretty darn painful. Feeling a bit woried we packed up our gear and set off. Luckily there was absolutely no knee pain when cycling: phew!

Our original plan had been to have our own snacks in Glenorchy but the cafe drew us back in (I blame it on food debt from crazy walks). We had yet another fantastic lunch and played with the grumpy, resident cat called Latte. We met Sam & Sophie (former lodge workers) and went to visit the shop to chat to Tara. All in all, we were just putting off the hilly cycle back to Queenstown.

Eventually we set off. We had a slight head wind but this proved to be the least of our concerns. With fatigued legs we tackled lots of long, very steep hills as we covered the 45km back to Queenstown. The views were again spectacular but my heart wasn't quite in it. I think some rest was required after all the walking!

Just before the last really big hill our Israeli friends, Guy and Gilli, had stopped to say hello. They'd been wondering where we were as they hadn't seen us overtake them and had taken an extra day to walk the difficult Caples track. We had a nice chat - they've been a feature, on and off, of the last couple of weeks of our adventure.

Eventually we rolled into Queenstown in the early evening. I was pretty cooked and Claire took the lead in our accommodation hunt. After realising that Queenstown sits in the opposite of a sun trap we had ruled out camping so a hunt for a hostel it was! We tried calling a few to no avail. Next up we dropped into Bumbles who also had no room. The kind lady at the desk rang around to try and find us a room! She found one which we took after very little deliberating at the Aspen Lodge. We were a bit worried that this was a mega-big hostel but luckily it was segregated into several buildings. We had a nice twin room with paper thin walls to the English couple next door ("Did you do a smelly poo?" etc, but the girl was very good at singing and liked Ronan Keating!) Claire went and sought out food as my knee was definitely bad news - we enjoyed a nice snack meal in our cosy room.

Mmmmh, we like beds.