The farthest from home I’ve ever been
January 13th, 2024. Christchurch to Queenstown
The domestic terminal at the Christchurch airport is like going back in time in a good way. Anyone can walk right up to a gate without a security screening. No one asked for our ID. The planes pull up to the gates as if they were buses. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was playing when we arrived.
We did have to scan our tickets to get through the gate and onto the tarmac (which we walked across to get to our propeller plane). So refreshing! We could have arrived 15 minutes before our flight.
The plane wasn’t full, so after the seat belt sign turned off I hopped across the aisle to get a better view of the mountains. To my surprise the terrain was bare of trees, with only yellow scrub grass and patches of agriculture. I pictured it being forested and thanked god we weren’t on a bus driving through all that for ten hours.
We touched down in a similarly formidable landscape, though with a suspiciously uniform placement of pine trees around town that terminated abruptly at a very specific altitude. I asked the cab driver that drove us to the hotel if the trees had been planted by people He said they had and that is was bare before, making things hard for the first settlers as there was no firewood.
The QT hotel where we are staying (same brand hotel we stayed in in Auckland) is great. Artsy. We have a room facing the lake and views for miles. By some miracle our room was ready at 12:30 when we arrived so we ditched our bags and walked to town for lunch.
This part of town is 1000% for tourists which is a bit of a disappointment. I wondered if the real town was somewhere else (yes it was), but only 16,000 people live here. I did a search for a town in California with 16k people (and no major tourist attractions) and Ukiah came up. We visited there recently and it has only a handful a restaurants, a few markets, some specialty retail, one nail salon, many empty storefronts. So whatever this is, I shouldn’t complain, as without the silly chocolate factory and overpriced harbor-front restaurants there would probably be a lot of nothing.
Afterwards I walked around Queenstown Gardens, a small peninsula with a pretty park, but gale force winds blew from every direction so I gave up and went back to the hotel and took a bath. Always a luxury since we don’t have a tub at home.
The sun doesn’t set until 9:30 here, so after my bath I went for a walk on a lakefront trail that morphed from a paved sidewalk on the side of the road to somewhat legit hiking on a small dirt path. Views were spectacular and ever-changing, with sun, clouds, shadows making the landscape look completely different every few minutes.
We had a snacky dinner at the hotel bar and watched the sun set…or more accurately watched it get dark. I like it here. It’s got that clutch your chest beauty every time I turn around.
Roadtripz and Other Journeys 