Penultimate day of the trip (because the word penultimate is great)
January 16, 2024. Queenstown to Auckland
Last day in Queenstown. Woke to the gorgeous view, then ventured out to get us breakfast from a nearby bakery.
I took one more hike on the trail I love before we headed to the airport for Auckland part two.
I lucked out and was seated on the left (west) side of the plane and had great views of the coast for the whole flight. Extra amazing bonus was flying over the volcano featured on the front of the Lonely Planet guidebook I’d been carrying this whole trip, Mount Taranaki. Classic volcano like a kid would draw. I wanted to visit in real life but couldn’t fit it in this time. I don’t want to trash talk people who shut their shades to watch a movie, but WTF – we are flying and there are so many sights you will never get to see on a normal day during your normal life. <cough> Volcano! </cough>
Our hotel in Auckland, the SO/ (we were never sure how to pronounce it so we called it the Soy because of that silly slash) is very masculine. I’ve never thought of hotels having a gender, other than bed and breakfasts. This one was tall, dark, brooding, good-looking, but also aloof and unfriendly. We were greeted by some expensive-ass car (Bentley? Rolls? I forget) parked by the front doors with a custom license plate referencing the hotel and two large stone lion statues. My eyes began to roll. The lobby was self-consciously over-decorated in a Philippe Stark 1990’s way, all black reflective stone and mirrors and a huge, awkwardly placed chandelier (20 feet around and nearly touching the floor), a couch tipped up on its side, tuffets with fringe, neon, leather armchairs. I dunno. It felt like a rich kid trying to be cool and failing. The layout was wrong for fun. Great for a quick Instagram snapshot, then move on.
Our room was also dark and brooding, with the exception of the bright gold sinks. Bleck. The swirly O design element running through the space felt like it had been added so that a hotelier could walk a reporter from Architectural Digest around and say, “We aren’t some crappy chain, we are a boutique hotel. Look, here is our custom swirl! It’s on the wall, on the pillows, and carved into the door handle. It’s art!” Pretensions aside, it was a nice room with a great view.
We went up to the roof bar for a drink. Not actually on the roof, but close, and the outdoor patio featured the gale-force winds we’ve come to expect here in New Zealand. The place was dead other than an awkward work event featuring a herd of men in suits and a lone woman in stilettos. Go Barbara!
Later, we had a fun dinner at Dr. Rudi’s Rooftop Brewing Company, this time really on a roof and overlooking a harbor. Pretty sunset and great people watching. The large table across from us was sparsely occupied by two pretty young women wearing tons of makeup and high-heeled boots–both worried that no one was going to show up for the birthday drinks. I was worried too, after an hour passed. A handful did finally arrive, though it clearly wasn’t what the birthday girl had hoped for.
We had a good dinner and watched the sun set, then headed back to our pompous hotel for a good night’s sleep.
Milford Sound…and I discover everyone in New Zealand isn’t sweet and polite
Monday, January 15, 2024. Queenstown and other places.
I’m not a morning person, so waking up early to make the Milford Sound tour departure time of 6:30 a.m. was tough. I had a troubled sleep, worried I wouldn’t wake up.
Was it worth getting up pre-dawn to see this amazing sunrise? NO.
The pickup was only a few blocks away, right on the lake, and we were one of the first there and got good seats near the front of the bus. The driver was a real character who grew up just a few towns away. She had a bad cold and coughed and sneezed continuously, which was unfortunate for us, as despite the odds we hadn’t gotten sick yet on this trip, and for her (not sure why she had to work).
She was one of the few actual New Zealand natives we got to spend time with, albeit in a passive way. She was polite and friendly when she did the tour-company-mandated descriptions of major landmarks, but off mic she swore and complained about every driver on the road and told stories of the trouble she got into in high school.
The four-hour drive to the sound was beautiful. First, along the lake, then passing through pastureland with sheep and cows.
We had a rest stop at a gas station/cafe in Teanu. I was hungry and got a terrible savory pastry that I literally spat out, and ate peanut M&Ms instead. On the plus side there were llamas in a field next to the gas station and the cafe sold llama food. I bought a couple bags and shared with my fellow tourists.
Leaving Teanu, we entered the amazing Fiordland National park. Lush, with many different types of native plants, tall mountains, dramatic peaks, glaciers, rushing blue rivers, lakes, waterfalls. You’d need a car to explore it properly.
Why is the water always so beautiful? Okay, here it has an amazing frame.
We made several photo stops, but the driver had put the fear of god into us about getting back to the bus in ten minutes or less or she’d leave us and we all did believe her, so it was rushed. I wanted to spend more time in each place and hike around and take it all in.
All the white lines on that mountain are waterfalls
Our bus driver was skilled at parking the giant bus in areas with small turnouts and/or very little parking. Most of the view spots were very popular and we had to pass some by as they were full. In one instance we may have been sticking out into the road a bit and she muttered about recently having gotten a ticket for doing just this. I appreciated that she really wanted us to see the good stuff, even if she might get in trouble.
The road led to the end of a glacial valley and someone, somehow, got funding to drill a tunnel through to the other side–which connects to Milford Sound. The tunnel is only one lane so we had to wait for everyone heading east to exit before we got our turn. It was a legit, carved-out-of-rock tunnel, and long and dark and very satisfying.
We emerged at the dead end of another valley, with another breathtaking view. The road from there was steep, with crazy hairpin turns, and made even scarier thanks to our insane driver. I know she does this tour four times a week and knows the road, but we went way too fast.
After driving for hours through peaceful wilderness, it was a shock to arrive at the dock and find a jammed parking lot and a maelstrom of tourists waiting to depart on one of the four boats. The bus driver warned us about flies and she wasn’t kidding. They were small and nasty and everywhere. I dowsed myself in bug spray and that did the trick, though it also kept R. away as it’s extremely toxic.
Our boat
We waited in a long line to board, and because we’d purchased the optional buffet lunch, were immediately directed to another line. The food was as bad as I expected but there wasn’t an alternative. Also horrible were the Chinese tour groups. I’d gotten used to everyone being so polite here I was taken aback. They didn’t merely ignore the line to the buffet, they physically pushed people aside to get to the food, and did the same to claim tables. I began to wonder about the culture in China. Maybe it’s a free-for-all and there are no lines? A bit of internet research seems to confirm this. Thank you to reddit:
“The communist revolution in China really engrained the mentality that “you need to assert yourself to get anything” because the rampant famine during Mao’s rule really meant that if you didn’t fight to get to the front of the food lines, you and your family weren’t eating. You have to remember that the communist revolution was only ~60 years ago. There’s a whole generation of people that are still alive today that learned that being polite meant you weren’t getting any government controlled resources (food, medicine, etc.) because they were so scarce. That survival mentality got passed onto the next generation so it became the norm in mainland China’s society.“
I wolfed down my lunch–mainly scalloped potatoes–as the boat had cast off and the voyage through the sound had begun. The chill wind gave me the opportunity to finally wear the compact down jacket I’d bought specifically for this trip. And…I probably could have done without it. It took up 15% of my suitcase and I only wore it once. I had vague ideas I’d be hiking in the alps and that never happened.
To give you a sense of scale, the small white dot to the left of center is another tour boat
Insert two-plus hours of me gaping at nature and running from one side of the boat to the other.
Milford sound was much greener than I’d expected, given the mountains we’d seen on the way here were bare. I got Kauai vibes with the lush vegetation and waterfalls. The scale was hard to comprehend in a way the made it not as awesome as it should have been. Does that make sense? I felt like I was looking at something a couple hundred feet high that was very close to me – and then I’d see one of the other boats and it’d be a small speck and my mind would go oooooohhhhh.
The sound isn’t huge. We got to the sea pretty quickly.
The bus ride back was again beautiful. The two people in the very front seats took a plane back ($487 each!!) so the driver offered R. and I their seats. Looking through the front windshield (in what was to me the driver’s seat) was amazing and frightening. I was on the left side and we were driving on the left side of the road and I was pretty sure we were going off the cliff.
We spent a mellow evening at the hotel as our eyes were full and we were all traveled out. The changing light over the lake is always enough entertainment. I like it here.
Another Gondola!
January 14, 2024. Queenstown, NZ.
We had rain early in the morning and when it let up I went for a walk on the same trail I’d taken last night. This time, everything was dewy and fresh and tiny streams and waterfalls gushed down the hillsides. Very pretty and fresh.
The entire shoreline of lake Wakatipu is covered with rocks like these. I was in seventh heaven.
Today was explore-the-town day. The place had a ski town vibe (sports stores, bars) because it is a ski town, with several nearby resorts. A staffer at our hotel declared it “not busy” at this time of year, but it sure looked busy to me.
First stop, the gondola. This one was very steep, and as usual overpriced. All trees beneath the cables had fallen or been felled, many remaining uncleared, and I saw evidence of ruined stairways. I read there’d been a landslide a few years ago. I’d done a deep dive last night trying to figure out what kind of rocks lined the lake and ended up on a technical paper about the geology of the area. Good, stable land had all been built on years ago, and as the town expanded with “pressure for residential expansion,” developers began building on unstable ground.
“The steep slopes surrounding the Queenstown area are predisposed to instability due to inherent weakness of the Otago Schist due to lithotype variation, foliation attitude, foliation shears, and rock mass discontinuities.”
Hmmmmm. I wondered if the trees, which had been planted by humans, might actually be destabilizing the hills with their roots.
The view up top was good though no real surprises. I’d gotten a sense of the place from the plane trip in, my hikes, and the view from our room.
Back on the ground, a surprise! Goats in a cemetery! I investigated later and discovered they have a problem with flocks(?) of wild goats.
This picture has it all. Historic cemetery, evidence of the landslide, and feral goats.
We had a late lunch at a really good tapas place, but oh my gosh, the wind. Blow the bread basket off the table level wind. What is up with the wind in New Zealand?
Tonight–early to bed as we have to get up at an un-vacationly-early time tomorrow for the Milford Sound tour (which I am really excited for.)
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 