South to Queenstown

We continued down the increasingly scenic West Coast highway which winds along the shoreline with desolate, rocky beach to the right, hilly rainforest to the left, and occasional dives into pristine farmland valleys and sheep-and-cow meadows (man, are there a lot of sheep here).

One of the greatest things about New Zealand driving (aside from the astounding scenery) is you are often the only car within eye-shot on the road. It definitely gives an end-of-the-world type feeling, especially when you look out into the ocean and realize that if you could see far enough, Antarctica would be visible over the horizon.

We stopped in the tiny town of Haast for a quick pit-stop and sampled the local favorite white-bait pattie on bread with butter for lunch. The pattie is essentially a slew of minnows squashed together and fried - slimy yet satisfying?

From there the road leads inland, back through the Southern Alps. It gets windier, and the road passes around gorgeous, massive, deep blue mountain lakes. The camera was constantly firing. The road to Queenstown twists downhill through switch-backs with stunning green mountain valley below.

Queenstown itself is enveloped in cinematic beauty - sitting snugly by the massive lake Wakatipu, it is pushed up to the shore by green mountain peaks behind it, only outmatched by the view across the lake if "The Remarkables" a barren, indigo, rocky, snow-capped mountain range. This begged the question, "Where are we?" (A repeating theme throughout our trip).

We checked into our hostel (with private bathrooms and a lakeside view!!), strolled around town, had dinner, and took in some of the active Queenstown nightlife - even a cover band that I swear stole my old band's setlist. The town dwarfs all others in terms of its international tourist cachet, which we found a little off-putting after spending so much time in the quiet serenity of the rest of New Zealand. There are hordes of 18-22 Brits and Aussies and East Asians prowling the streets, drunk, immature, inconsiderate, and energized post-skydive, bungee jump, or whatever other high-adrenaline activity they dared (man, I sound old now...). Bottom line is, being centrally located in town, we got very poor sleep the next two nights. On the other hand, the food was great and we had some great meals including sushi, fish, and middle eastern.

The next morning we took the skyline gondola to the top of the nearby peak and did a few "luge" runs (an alpine slide), while trying to decide if we would try something more extreme (to be continued...).

We also walked around the garden park. We left Queenstown after two days, thankful for the city-comforts but ready to jump back into the less-disturbed wilderness of New Zealand.

South to Queenstown

Queenstown, New Zealand