Day 21: #ThatWanakaTree, Rippon Vinyard, & Roy’s Peak
Monday, September 16th
We start our day early at “ThatWanakaTree Yes, that’s what the location is called on google. Hashtag and everything. It was the most beautiful tiny tree in the lake surrounded by snow capped mountains.
The entire town is gorgeous here. I’m so happy we planned to stay two days.
We then venture down the street to go on a walk while the mountains clear up and to grab a flat white. We stop into a super cute cafe called Urban grind.
We go stroll through town on our way back and stop into some more stores.
We finally learned what Aotearoa means New Zealand in Māori language from a girl in a cool store called Roam who we just met. She gives us a bunch of tips for Bali, so that was also great! Christopher got a neat Hooker Valley long sleeve shirt.
We swing back by the campground to book another night.
We then venture to Rippon Vinyard. It’s just around the corner from our campground. Honestly, this was some of the best views of our entire trip. You can do a free tasting here which was fun and we learned a lot about the grapes here in New Zealand.
We head to Roy’s peak. Everything is very close here. It was a bit later in the day, and we didn’t start our hike until 3pm. We said we would maybe go up for 1-1.5 hours then head back down, so we left my coat and didn’t bring water. Well, we were having a great time, scaling the mountain, going off the trail & making our own short cuts, that we ended up doing almost 8 miles total. It was also the steepest hike we’ve done thus far. It was quite the workout.
Part way up, we met a girl named Hanna, and she was “speed gliding” which is like paragliding! It was such a cool experience watching her run off the mountain and fly all the way down.
It’s funny, because the lady at the vineyard told us the views weren’t good except at the peak, but we can assure you, the ENTIRE hike is gorgeous. We didn’t even go to the peak, yet we didn’t feel we missed out. Oh, and there’s sheep!
We went back to the cafe/bar Kai Whaka Pai for dinner & a glass of wine. We have only eaten out one other time here in New Zealand, so we figured we could treat ourselves. Christopher got a margarita pizza, and he had them make me a special salad with grilled chicken even though it wasn’t on the menu. They had great music playing, and we were in our own little world jamming out & singing.
Christopher’s highlight was when we were singing to Noah Kahan in the car (campervan) on our short drive home.
My highlight was laying in bed having sweet pillow talk. Christopher’s simple words of telling me I’m his family (which he has said it before) but it doesn’t get old, and it never hurts to remind your loved ones just how much you love & appreciate them. These are truly life’s sweetest moments. It doesn’t matter where we are in the world, as long as we are together, we are the happiest. 
