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.)
Another windy city
January 12th, 2024. Still in Christchurch.
Turns out Christchurch has the 10th most turbulent airport IN THE WORLD. I’m feeling that today. We’re on the top floor (5th) of this hotel and the wind is whistling and moaning and blowing what sounds like metal trash cans around on the roof.
One of the reasons we chose this town was because they have a gondola. We love funiculars, gondolas, cogwheel railways, any type of strange conveyance. After breakfast we grabbed a cab and headed over.
The gondola here was a total rip off as far as cost. $40 NZ per person for what was at most a five minute ride. I shouldn’t be annoyed–the view up there was great. We could see a bay to the south and Christchurch sprawl to the north. People watching was good too, with one dorky dude with an expensive-looking camera rig taking photo after photo of his sexy, pouty posing girlfriend (I don’t know why I assumed they weren’t married. Come to think of it, who knows if it was even his girlfriend).
On a different day I’d have walked the meandering path back down to the visitor center but the wind was too nasty. On the cab ride back to the hotel we saw people on a path by the lagoon with one of those rental bikes where you normally sit side by side and pedal. In this case one person was pedaling and the other person was behind pushing as they tried to make headway against the wind.
Afterwards, we collected our dirty laundry from the hotel (the situation was getting dire for me with clean and dirty clothes mixed together in my packing cubes – bleck) and walked a mile to a laundromat.
The laundromat was located at the end of New Regent street, a cute pedestrian mall built in the 1930’s. We put clothes in the washer, then had a touristy lunch (not great food but great setting). Afterwards I got a Thai massage (across from the laundromat!) while R. played on the internet and watched our clothes dry.
I had to hold my hat on during the walk back to the hotel and this is a tight, snug baseball cap I use for travel and have worn on a sailboat ride in the San Francisco Bay (very windy) with no problem. It was extremely unpleasant. I don’t understand how the wind works here because it would be strongly at our backs and five minutes later in our faces–on the same street. Maybe this explains the lack of wind turbines.
We were supposed to ride a bus 9+ hours to Queenstown tomorrow, and not in the larger seats I’d booked for us previously. I couldn’t imagine this trip, sitting hot in the sun squished next to R., waiting for a rest stop so I could pee, eating some weird sandwich from a stinky bakery, not being able to take good photos because of window glare. I begged R. to see how much a flight would be as I heard travel within NZ wasn’t too expensive.
It wasn’t–didn’t cost much more than the bus. Miraculously, past me had booked fully-refundable bus tickets so I cancelled the trip. WOOO! So much relief. Tomorrow we fly!
We had dinner in a decent Mexican restaurant and afterwards a drink at Boo’s. The host from open mic night was playing guitar accompanied by a singer. The clientele tonight was New Zealand in the summer–very bridesmaid with so much floral print.
Despite the wind we had a good day, and I looked forward to getting the heck out of here tomorrow.
Roadtripz and Other Journeys 