Pinegrove

OK - Raeleen asked me to write that. It is true though that this has the best Wifi of the eight places we've stayed in NZ so far. I did a speed check and (nerd alert) you get 15Mbps download and 0.8Mbps upload. We didn't really care but were puzzled by the reviews, so I asked her. "We dug a trench" 😊 The other complaints are that the rooms aren't serviced daily (although they are SPOTLESS when you arrive) and that this is a way out of the centre of Twizel (anyone who knows Twizel will probably see that as a positive). So those are the complaints but this place is great - the apartments are huge, the kitchen is fabulous (we ate in all three nights - we didn't risk the Twizel 4 Square but brought food from Queenstown), and it's all brand new. There is no noise from the adjoining apartment. It has a wet bathroom (that was another complaint - 'the floors get wet': welcome to contemporary bathroom design, darling). It is incredibly light but with effective curtains in the bedrooms and it's got aircon for goodness sakes! Moreover, the apartments are very stylish - that's not me saying it, that's my Italian wife. A lot of thought has gone into the design and decor here. Little things like the diagonal tiling on the recessed shower area. We came here to walk and it's a perfect spot to access Lake Ohau and Pukaki. We did a lovely walk around the Pyramid, linking the Darts Bush/Flanagan Pass trail with a couple of other tracks to get a circuit and the next day we walked the Hooker Valley Track. Don't bother with the latter - packed with people on an overcast Tuesday to get to a glacier that looked like it was out of Banksy's Dismaland. Do take some photos looking down the luminous Pukaki Canal at sunset - we got the best shots of the holiday there.