Queenstown

Saturday 2 February 2008

After we finally found our hotel (the woman who answered the phone when we rang for directions has clearly never had to give directions before!) and checked in, we caught the bus back in to the township and had a wander around. The bus service here is fantastic. We could pick up a bus right outside the foyer entry at our hotel, and for $4.50 each could get a return ticket for the day into the town. If you wanted unlimited trips, including in to Arrowtown it was $13, but for our purposes the return ticket was sufficient. It stopped at most of the resorts and hotels on the way into town, and stopped at a central point. They ran every half an hour during the day up until fairly late in the evening. All the drivers were friendly, and didn’t mind the dumb questions tourists asked them.

Anyway, a quick wander around the town, and down to the waterfront ensued. More “oh my god” scenery.

By this time, we needed suitable refreshments, and walked back to an Irish bar, with the best views of any bar in town. A few bevvies there sitting in the sun refreshed us suitably. We also found out that they were replaying the England v Wales match the following afternoon. Well, we knew what we’d be doing tomorrow afternoon!

Dinner that evening was at a nice little, indoor, restaurant, just behind where the TSS Ernslaw docks. After a nice meal, it was back to the hotel for some zzzzz’s.

Sunday 3 February 2008

Breakfast this morning was at a place recommended by the Lonely Planet folks. And it was well recommended – if you are in Queenstown, you should have breakfast at Vudu. Breakfasts were hearty but not huge, so they didn’t leave you wanting to have a Bex and a nice lie down afterwards, but you were sufficiently fortified for the day ahead.

Thus fortified, we walked up to a bird sanctuary – the Kiwi Birdlife Park - which is next to the lower terminal for the gondola. The sanctuary is well worth the $30 per head entry fee. We were a little worried that it might be a bit lame after the first enclosure didn’t reveal it’s tuatara to us, but the next display – Kiwi House No. 1 certainly made up for it. They’re speedy birds! Kathy can understand why loose dogs love them so much – they’d be fun to chase. It was fantastic to sit there in the gloom and finally see them sniffing around, and running about – and they do run! The rest of the sanctuary was great after that.

We finally saw tuatara, but baby ones. We also saw kea, shovellers, blue ducks with ducklings, black stilts, other duck species, parrots, and 2 of the saddest New Zealand Pigeon Kathy thinks she’s seen in a long time. They didn’t really have a big enough enclosure (Matt: boy those birds are big – every time I see them I wonder what they taste like on the BBQ). Apart from that, it was great. We spent a lot longer there than we anticipated, but enjoyed it.

After the birds, we went up the gondola. It was spectacular! The view as you go up and down is simply jaw dropping:


And yes, Matt did stand up and take that photo! And now he knows why you don’t stand up in the gondola cars!

The view from the top is absolutely stunning:

It was so beautiful – just awesome, in the truer sense of the word.

After heading back down, we decided some fortification was in order, and so headed off. We went to the old court house building for a late lunch – the place was appropriately named ‘Guilty’ for fantastic tapas. We then went across the road to the Speights ale house. This place didn’t really grab us. It was trying to be a really swish brewery pub (if anyone reading this has been to the Malthouse, or Macs Brewery Bar in Wellington, it wanted to be like that, or any of the Monteiths tap rooms), but failed. It looked as though it was doing it on the cheap, and it showed. Just as well we weren’t hanging around, as we had rugby to watch! So, it was back down to the Irish pub for the biggest bollocking English rugby has had for a while! Go you good things! The fantastic result for the Welsh aside, it did show us the difference between Southern and Northern Hemisphere rugby watchers. The crowd was predominantly from the UK and Ireland, and very well mannered and well behaved. We were quite rowdy in comparison. We might have to tone our enthusiasm down a little in UK pubs, if the behaviour of the backpackers was anything to go by. (Matt: remember the pomms in Sydney for World Cup in 2003? I think those young boys in Queenstown were an exception) After more food at the Dux de Lux Queenstown (and more beers…), it was again back to the hotel for restorative sleep.

Monday 5 February 2008

Today, after a late-ish breakfast at a nice French style café, we went for a walk in the Queenstown Gardens. The Lonely Planet describes it as “lush and peaceful”, and so it is, but it is also full of lovely walks. The best takes you right around the peninsular that the gardens are on, and then back up into the formal gardens. On the day we did it, that was a good thing as it took us out of a sharp, cold, wind. It was still beautifully fine, though. Apart from the various walks, it looked as though it was also part of a Frisbee golf course, and it also appeared popular with the lunchtime runners from corporate Queenstown (yes, we did have a later start).

When we finally wandered back in to town, we bought tickets for the TSS Ernslaw, one of the things on Kathy’s “must do” list. A light fortifying lunch, and it was time to catch the boat!

The TSS Ernslaw (TSS stands for Twin Screw Steamship) has been plying the waters of Lake Wakatipu since 1912, and she runs for 11 months of the year (she’s out of commission for 1 month for repairs and maintenance). In the past she used to carry passengers, freight and livestock up and down the lake, but now she just carries passengers from Queenstown to Walter Peak Station and back again. (see http://www.realjourneys.co.nz/ for more info). The round trip takes about 1 ½ hours, and we really, really recommend it. While the wind was too cold for us to sit outside in comfort, the trip sitting inside was really toasty. It comes from the Ernslaw being a coal powered steamship! They’ve opened her up in the middle of the top deck, so you can stand and look down at the firemen and engineer doing their job, or you can actually go into the engine room and watch them at work from the walkways over the furnace and pistons. It was very, very cool. Well, hot actually, but fantastic nonetheless (that’s becoming a really worn out word, isn’t it?). The trip there and back was just stunning. We didn’t opt to do the farm excursion options, but plenty of others did, so there were less on the trip back then on the way over. If anyone is familiar with the Muttonbirds and their song “Ngaire”, they will appreciate it when we say “I’ve seen a lot of new shoes today”. One of the passengers was from New Jersey, and boy, was her accent a stereotype! What is it with American’s and gum?!? I know many cultures chew the stuff now, but please! Ah well, each to their own.

Dinner that night was at a nice Thai place, after wine at a nice winebar away from the waterfront. Matt paid for having his tom yum hot the next day, though!

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Today, we decided to take things easy. A late breakfast (much heavier than the past couple, but Kathy had pancakes – it was Shrove Tuesday after all!), a gentle wander, then we sat outside our favourite Irish pub. Kathy wrote up text to copy in to this blog, and we both sat and read our books. We set up a gentle conversation with a busker who was working on the waterfront opposite us – we both had an aversion to the gulls being fed by others! Naturally, we did have to give him a ‘donation’…

Dinner that night was at a fantastic waterfront restaurant. Lots of fresh seafood – including whitebait and Nelson oysters…

It did our souls good to have a day not doing much. Although it might sound from what we’ve written above that we’ve spent most of our time in Queenstown boozing (and we have spent some time it’s true), for us a holiday is also about taking time out and not doing much. Up until today we hadn’t had that opportunity. We have not done any of the adventure sport activities available to us in Queenstown – that’s not our style. We’ve enjoyed a lot of good Otago pinot noir (and to our fellow wine wankers – yes, we have a fave and yes, we have the details of the Australian distributor!), and we’ve sampled some of the gentler pleasures that Queenstown offers. We’ve looked at the stars at night. We’ve sat and watched the sun setting over the Remarkables – both from the waterfront in town and from our hotel. We’ve sampled the pleasures in various licensed establishments. We’ve sat and looked at the scenery. We’re not as poor as we perhaps could be. But this is a town we should, and will, return to. (Matt: 4 nights, no hangovers, the Queenstown tourist bureau will be upset!)

Other impressions of Queenstown – most of the employees in the hospitality industry are not Kiwis. Predominantly Poms, but also Americans and Western Europeans. To hear the New Zealand accent really jarred. Queenstown is really a place which will take a huge chunk of your cash. A really huge chunk. But it’s also a place where you can have a heck of a lot of fun.

Christchurch to Queenstown

1 February 2008

Today we picked up our rental car. We decided to rent a larger car than we have in the past, and as the day progressed we were very glad we did.

We managed to get out of Christchurch without too many wrong turns! (Matt: OK only one – stupid one-way / no-entry sign outside the car rental place – can’t even blame the navigator here, it was me who had the directions!!) State Highway 1 south of Christchurch is a very, very dull stretch of road. The only things to enliven it were our horror at the driving habits of some New Zealanders, and the road works. Matt was doing the driving (it’s only 3-ish hours to Twizel), and was horrified at some of the things he saw. The car we have is a 6 cylinder 4.0 litre beast, and had fantastic acceleration, but the Kiwi’s don’t seem to appreciate that when you are overtaking, you are supposed to be going faster than the vehicle you are overtaking before you pass, not just as you catch up! The speed limit for the open road is 100kmph, and in many areas it just simply isn’t safe to travel that fast. We had wiener-heads overtaking us at 120k’s just before blind corners, and the like. “How can he see around the corner?” “He’s using the Force, Luke…” We were very glad to get off SH1.

Heading inland to Twizel (via Mackenzie country) was – yet another – eye opener for Matt. The Canterbury plains – very much Canberra-like actually in colour and sparsity of vegetation on cultivated land (but with more bunnies and birds of prey) – gradually gave way to more and more hills. “Look Matty, crinkly bits!” Very hard to understand that settlers chose to live there to raise sheep, given the wealth of land across the Tasman around that time.

Of course, by this time, rain set in (hey, it’s NZ). Road was Ok in the big car, and we had a good stop at Lake Tekapo. Its bright, milky blueness was amazing – all from its glacial schist base. We had to compete at the Church of the Good Shepherd with the inevitable tour coaches (fortunately we seemed to be going against, rather than with, them), but it was still pretty spectacular. Matt asked the daft question “why is there a large window behind the altar?” Erm, so you can apparently reflect on the natural glory created by God (if that is what you believe) – or more likely so that you have something to look at during a boring sermon! By the time we hit Lake Pukaki the weather had turned to shite. Kath said that a mountain was there “Really Matty, really!”. But even a return visit the next day was a cloudfest. Twizel was very “Canberra Suburb” like, mostly because it was designed as a “planned town” in the 60’s to service the construction of the hydro-electric scheme, of which nearby Lake Dunstan and the Clyde Dam form a key part. A very Belconnen feel too - the “pubs are in the shopping centre” layout. We were glad we got to Twizel when we did, and the weather really closed in, making us glad we brought that warm weather gear with us! Our motel in Twizel was actually the best accommodation we have had in NZ (Aspen Court) up till this point. Clean (no mould! no mould!), bright, big, open. Nice people too.

We battled through the weather to the pub, and watched the local lads (country boys – pick those who had been to boarding school!) try to hit on the bar girls, meanwhile it was happy hour with 2 fer 1, except for some wines. (Matt here: that's buy 1 and get 2, whether or not you want 2 - hey, they were very adamant). The lads were hitting the rum and coke a bit too hard, and didn’t appear to be making much headway! After a couple of warming drinks, we went to a local restaurant for dinner, which was nice but not spectacular.


2 February 2008

Today, it was off to Queenstown, after an abortive trip back up the road to Lake Pukaki to see if Mt. Cook was showing his head. Again Matt drove, with Kathy in charge of the photography. The drive through from Twizel and over the Lindis Pass is just spectacular!

Lots of ‘crinkly’ bits, and lots of “oh my god” moments. (Matt – I swore to myself I wasn’t going to do it whilst driving, but there were so many blind turns into the most gorgeous passes that had postcard perfect backdrops – I literally gasped, much to Kathy’s enduring giggling). The weather also held. At Twizel it was a little cloudy and cool, with the clouds clinging to the peaks in a beautiful way (unless you’re up in them, then it’s a bitch), and the further we went south, the better the weather got.

We stopped for a late coffee/early lunch at Cromwell. We had a wander around the “historic village “, which was really only buildings moved when Lake Dunstan was filled, and was pretty lame. Still, we had a nice sausage roll each (well, nice the first time, but not as it repeated on us!), and sat and watched the guys water skiing and wake-boarding on the lake. A much better place is Arrowtown. Another “must do” on anyone’s list when they’re down this end of the country. Very pretty, and a bit quaint, but soooo much better then Cromwell (Kath called poor old Cromwell “a lame to fame”). We wandered about Arrowtown, and walked along to the remains of the Chinese settlement. That was really good, and it was a bit sad to read about the way in which the Chinese miners were treated. Mind you, in 100 years time how will we be judged by our descendents?

After wandering through the Chinese settlement, we walked up to the Arrowtown cemetery. It was a little disappointing, as there were no graves prior to the 1890’s, so we did wonder where the gold era graves were (All the signs said it was part of the Chinese display but it was the actual current-era Arrowtown graveyard). But it was also sad. That said, if you didn’t die from accident, childbirth or war you did tend to have a good chance of living a long life, and if you were a woman you could live up to 20 years longer than your spouse of (another) 12 years younger (go women!! Matt – go lonely women). The graves of children are always sad to see, but that sadness was alleviated by watching the rabbits running between the graves!

From Arrowtown (and the ‘oh my gosh’ scenery) it was on to the breathtaking beauty of Queenstown. This town has to be one of the most beautiful places either of us have ever been to. The Remarkables are just that – remarkable. It is so beautiful here.

Fast forward : On our last day we heard a pair of yanks say “this is the most beautiful place I have seen in my entire life” – and neither Kathy nor Matt could object to that. We tried, but its simply true. It’s not the most picturesque, not the most remote - it just has something! If you are not moved by Queenstown you have no heart. Come here at least once, whoever you are! It’s amazing (more next post!). (Kath - Mind you, Matt lived in Wellington for 2 years and didn’t come here at all – Matt, I love you but you are a bit of a dick sometimes! Matt – yep, my words exactly, what a dopey bastard!)