Qtown adventures

April 30

Today was absolutely beautiful with bright blue skies and it was sunny. It is starting to really feel like fall here, quite chilly in the mornings. We now need to wear the ski jackets we bought just before we left home. We drove back across the Southern Alps. This time we crossed at Haast Pass. The west coast is quite wet as I have mentioned.  The east side of the Alps is much drier and the contrast was remarkable.

While we were on the west side we took two nature walks: the first was to see

Thunder Creek Falls a great waterfall and the second was called Blue Pools where the water was aquamarine.  It was a perfect day for these walks. The scenery continues to blow us away. The narrow canyon with its high rock walls and rivers flowing at the bottom of the canyon kept us ooing and ahing the entire trip.

After we crossed the pass we stopped at a small camping area called Cameron Flat to use the toilet and what a surprise. This viewpoint literally made me weep with its beauty. I just stood there staring at the scenery and I was awe struck, filled with wonder. It helps that the sun was out and that the autumn light is so soft. We stopped for coffee and a scone and stopped numerous times to take photos throughout the trip, making a three hour trip last for six hours.

We passed two gorgeous lakes: Hawea and Wanaka. We saw one boat during a 45 minutes ride along the lakeshore. This is a very rural, very remote part of NZ.  These lakes are crystal clear with the most beautiful shades of blue.  Fall has arrived so the trees were a beautiful range of autumnal colors. Yellow was the predominant color but there were reds, oranges and rusts as well. 

The fields that hadn’t been irrigated were brown. We topped the Crown Range Summit at 1076 meters making it the highest road in NZ. I can’t remember if I made a point of mentioning that we drove over Arthur’s Pass and when coming down from the summit, the road grade was 16%, the steepest grade I have been on. We discovered that farmers raise deer for consumption. No wonder we see deer in pastures and venison on the menus frequently here. We wanted to picnic but couldn’t find a roadside table but found a little pull out and had a rushing creek right beside it. It was cold but sunny. We used the trunk surface for our table for assembling our sandwiches.

We arrived in Queenstown later in the afternoon. We like this hostel a lot. We are in the ‘high priced’ section so there are no young kids here. We discovered a new term used here: flashpackers. This is a backpacker with means. So I think we are in the flashpackers unit. We have a good sized room, bathroom with a shower and a TV which we never watch. There is a very nice common kitchen and lounge with a larger screen TV and a grand view of the large lake, Wakatipu. This unit has four bedrooms and we are the only people here. Downstairs and another building have dorms for backpackers and those rooms go for ¼ the price that we pay.

We took a walk downtown and what a contrast. Q town is known as the thrill seeker capital in NZ. Bungee jumping originated nearby. So the town is a frenzy with young people seeking every form of adrenaline rush you can imagine: paragliding, skydiving, ‘swinging’ that includes a 60 meter freefall, canyoning, white water sledging and boarding (Who knew?). and jetboarding. Needless to say we feel like old geezers as most of the thrill seekers are less than half our age. There are a slew of shops and eateries and they are crammed packed. The city is like a bee hive.

We decided to eat leftovers we had brought with us from the night before and reheat them. We bought a piece of pumpkin and thought we would bake it in the oven. You would think I had learned my lesson the last time but being a butthead I tried again. It was late when we returned from our walk downtown. I often get low blood sugar if I don’t eat at regular intervals. So we started cooking around 7:00. We couldn’t figure out how to get the microwave to work. It would turn on but it never heated anything up. I had similar difficulties with the oven and I got quite frustrated since I was running on empty at that point. We then realized you have to flip a switch to then work the buttons for the oven. So I cranked it up to high and threw the sliced pumpkin in. I almost burnt it. We ate close to 8:00 but lived to tell the tale.

May 1

One of the highlights to our trip was to go to Milford Sound. I have read about it and several people exclaimed about its beauty. We booked a tour because of the long drive. We arrived at the tour office as instructed at 6:50 and left Q town at 7:15. We were on a very fancy tour bus with a glass roof top that increased visibility for the passengers. There were about 30 people on the tour. We drove past Lake Wanaka which is 89 kilometers long, making it the longest lake in NZ. It was formed by a glacier as many of NZ’s lake are. Fish were brought in to stock the lake: brown trout, rainbow trout and salmon are the three I remember.  Right next to the lake is a mountain chain called The Remarkables. They shoot straight up from the ground and are…remarkable! Some parts of the Lord of the Rings were filmed on the other side. 

The Maori were here about 800-1200 years ago. They mostly ate birds and the biggest one around was the flightless Moa. Unfortunately the bird is now extinct due to overhunting. The Moa was 3-4 meters high and weighed 250 kilos (over 500 lbs). The Maori and the European settlers burned the forests to clear the land here. Sheep were imported to NZ  and now there are about 35 million. At its height in the 1960’s there were 70 million. There are about four million people in NZ so the sheep far outweigh the population. The major industries in the south are dairy, aluminum and fishing. Tourism fits in there somewhere. One more weird fact is that in 1910 eight moose were imported from the US and released on the south island. None have been seen since one was shot in the 1960’s. The only native mammal is the bat. All others have been imported. We have seen the same two crops being raised here so I asked our tour guide/bus driver. I learned that one is turnips and that the other is spinach. Both are raised for sheep.

Kiwis love to tramp and there are trails all over both islands that are well maintained. Some are short like the ones we have been on but others are 8 hours to several days long. These usually have huts along the way where you can sleep and rent for $25 -$50 a day.

It took five hours to get to the sound. This included a tea stop and three stops for photos. As always the scenery was fabulous. We got off the bus, got right onto the boat that was to take us around the sound and to the Tasman Sea. It was a two hour trip with a complimentary picnic lunch. They also served a fabulous pumpkin soup that was scalding hot. It rains four out of five days here and we lucked out with another brilliant day of sunshine. 

From the boat we saw small porpoises, a seal and her pup and numerous waterfalls.  The extremely steep cliffs rising above the water were covered with plant life including some trees. Since there is no soil, the plants are all intertwined and support each other but if one starts sliding down the cliff they all slide down the cliff. Eighty percent of the trees here are endemic and are not found anywhere else. Bees were imported as well as NZ has no daytime pollinator.

It was a calm day at sea so we really didn't need the motion sickness patches that we were wearing. The trip home included one stop for gas. We arrived back in Q town a few minutes before 8:00 so walked to a nearby Indian restaurant and had a delicious dinner for a reasonable price. The place was packed. We both wondered if the 13 hour trip was worth two hours on the boat seeing the sound.

May 2

We ate breakfast in our room as the kitchen area was so cold this morning. We decided to visit a nearby town, Arrowtown. This was a gold mining town back in the 1860’s. Chinese labor had been imported to help support the businesses that had grown up as a result of the miners living there. Many of the miners left in the mid 60’s when there was another gold rush on the west coast of the south island. That is when Chinese labor was imported. By 1870 there were 5,000 Chinese in Arrowtown. At first they were welcomed but at some point they were ill treated by the locals. The town is charming with many original buildings now serving as eateries and shops. We ate lunch in a tiny restaurant that was housed in an original building that had been someone’s house. The food was excellent.

We visited the local museum which had excellent displays of the town’s history. We walked around town and to the area known as the Chinese settlement. It was pouring rain today and quite cold. I got cranky as I often do when I am cold so we ducked into a historic hotel for a cup of tea/coffee and to warm up. We decided to call it a day and come back to the hostel. Ron is reading and I am blogging. As of this minute I am finally caught up.