Cessna C172-ZK-EKH

Another early start this morning, with the alarm going off at 6am for the second day running.

Breakfast, tea and a walk (up and) down to town. There was a chill in the air so the take away flat white was welcome.

We boarded our bus to Wanaka – about one hour away from Queenstown. This was a public bus service but no-one’s told the driver. He’s under the impression that he works for a travel company and he gave us a commentary all the way to Wanaka. We drove through old mining settlements, vineyards and orchards; we could just about see the scenery through the fog. We passed the fruit sellers we’d stopped at so many weeks ago when we first boarded our Flying Kiwi bus, but this time, we stopped across the road at Mrs Jones Fruit Orchard in Cromwell; this being an official stop en-route. We crossed the 45th parallel south – the line which marks the halfway point between the equator and the South Pole.

A few minutes after we got to Wanaka, our taxi arrived and it was a short five minutes journey to Spitfire Lane.

We were at the office of U-Fly… crazy folks who let you fly planes!

I’d opted for a 30 minutes flight and Andy got to come in as passenger. Cessna C172-ZK-EKH is a four-seater plane. Byron, my co-pilot, did the hard work of taking off and as soon as we were at a reasonable altitude, he sat back and handed me the control of the plane.

My journey was over Lake Wanaka and Mou Waho Island – ‘the island, in a lake, in an island, in a lake, in an island in the ocean’. To put it more clearly, there is an island in a lake (Arethusa Pool)  in an island (Mou Waho) in a lake (Wanaka) in an island (South Island) in the ocean!

The experience was intense. I was able to catch glimpses of the scenery but kept thinking: ‘concentrate, you’re in control of this thing’. In truth, the U-Fly folks are not that crazy; they have dual control ready for the pilots to take control at a moment’s notice. Which is just as well, because flying is way way out of my comfort zone, let alone flying a plane.

My circle completed, I aligned the plane to the runway and Byron took control for the landing.

Andy and I swapped places; he barely fitted in the cockpit! Byron got us under way in no time and handed the controls over to Andy. This was a longer flight (Andy’d picked the 50 minute one) so we were able to go over to Mt Aspiring. Byron’s spotted a couple of people on top on Mt Aspiring, which gave us some great perspective. The other interesting thing was ‘The Neck’, the bit of land separating Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka. Again, we’d driven on it during our first afternoon with Flying Kiwi, and seeing it from the air was amazing. Without that bit of land, the two lakes would form the biggest lake in New Zealand. We also saw Boundary Creek, our first campsite. I enjoyed being a passenger for this flight; the scenery was incredible – glaciers, glacial lakes and very rugged in places.

I went up to 4,300 feet and Andy up to 10,500. We now have certificates congratulating us on taking our first steps towards becoming pilots.

Byron was headed back to Wanaka to grab lunch and he kindly gave us a lift back. We said our goodbyes and headed to Francesca’s Italian Kitchen. We made the most of the weather and sat outside. We couldn’t have picked a better day for the flights.

With our bus back to Queenstown at 3.45pm (the last possible departure time), we explored Wanaka’s outdoor clothing shops as we need some waterproof footwear for next week. Andy didn’t find anything; I got some red wellies 🙂

The other must do thing in Wanaka is to watch a film at Cinema Paradiso – a Wanaka institution. With no late travel options back to Queenstown, we popped into the cinema hoping to get a look at the screening rooms.

The journey back was lovely; the bus took a different route. This means we got to see Cardrona where there is a whisky distillery and an infamous South Island site: the Cardrona Bra Fence. That’s right, a fence covered in bras. Four of them suddenly appeared between Christmas and New Year in 1999 and now, it’s reckoned that numbers are into the thousands.

We asked the driver to drop us off at the Frankton Hub, and walked to the Frankton cemetery. This old cemetery was established near what was the first local hospital (the building no longer exists). It tells tales of miners killed accidentally on the Shotover River and a poor chap from England who died from diarrhoea.

We were lucky in that we only had to wait a few minutes for the route 11 bus to our stop. We discovered a shortcut to the flat – instead of a long steep curvy incline, we have a series of steps. Hard work, but much much quicker.

Sitting on our terrace, with a glass of wine in our hands, we looked at each other and smiled.

We flew a plane today.