New Zealand 10 - Queenstown

We left Te Anau for the half-day drive to Queenstown. Of course, as slow as we drive (compared to the Kiwis) it was a little longer with all the stops for picture taking. Speaking of which, how would you like to live in this house below with this view?

We got into Queenstown and just walked around seeing the sights. The Queenstown Gardens has these wonderful lawn bowling greens. It's a little like bocci ball, except you are truly bowling. The Gardens were beautiful, with trees in bloom all over. As you can see in the picture below, the tulips were also in bloom.

Queenstown is located in this wonderful setting, surrounded by towering mountains. Every view is framed with these snow-capped mountains.

On the walk from our hotel to downtown, we walked by a rugby club, where there always seemed to be people playing. Hands down, rugby is the toughest sport we've seen. No pads, no helmets, no huddles to take breaks, no time-outs. Just two 40 minute halves of hard running and smashing into each other.

Queenstown in located on Lake Wakatipu, a huge lake. Go to Google Maps and search on "Queenstown, New Zealand" to see how big this lake is. There was a beautiful old boat (the S. S. Earnslaw) that took people on trips around the lake

And of course, it wouldn't be a New Zealand lake without an America's cup boat moored on it somewhere. This is an older boat that I never caught the name of.

Queenstown is pretty much heaven for extreme sports enthusiasts. If there's a new way to risk limb and life, it was probably discovered here. People here play hard, then they party hard afterwards. So if jet boating, bungy-jumping, extreme skiing, parachuting, hang gliding, etc. is not your thing, there's not a lot to do around this area. We were a lot more comfortable in the more wild areas of New Zealand.

But that's why they make chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

New Zealand 6 - West Coast of the South Island

Welcome to the next part of our trip to New Zealand. In this part of the trip, we travelled from the Abel Tasman area down the west coast of the South Island to Te Anau in the Fiordland area. We were on the road for 4 days in a row, so it was a little more difficult part of the trip, than our normal times of staying put for a few days.

One of the more ubiquitous sites in New Zealand is the farm scene. There are beautiful pastoral scenes of sheep, cows or horses grazing at the foot of glacier-covered mountains. Maybe you could see these types of scenes in the Alps, but I can’t think of anywhere else you would see these scenes.

When we were preparing for the trip, I checked out a library book which had a picture of the Punakaiki Rocks in it. These rocks are formed from layers of limestone that have eroded over the eons into these fantastic contorted shapes.

On the second day down the coast, we stopped at Fox Glacier. It was a very rainy day, but we walked out to the tip of the Fox Glacier. The town of Fox Glacier is a really nice little town, and reminded us of a lot of little towns in the Cascades or even the town of Mt Shasta, CA.

The next day was beautiful! Bright sunshine, no rain, no clouds, no wind. We had a gorgeous view of the mountains of Mount Cook National Park from our hotel parking lot.

The hotel owner asked if we were going to see Lake Matheson. We had planned for a pretty good drive for the day, so we said that we weren’t planning to. He advised us to go see the lake, as today would be a very good day. He was correct! The lake was a perfect mirror, reflecting the mountains without a ripple on it.

The southern part of the South Island has several beautiful long lakes that fill valleys for miles. When you leave the west coast and turn inland, you begin to have to go around or along side these large lakes. We had great picnic lunches on Lake Hawea, north of Wanaka,

and on Lake Wakatipu, south of Queenstown.

We will discuss Queenstown later, as we went back there after staying in Te Anau. But for now, we are arriving at Te Anau. The long trip down the west coast of the South Island is over and we will next go visit Milford and Doubtful Sounds, and do some hiking around the Te Anau area.

We'll leave you with a picture of Cameron Flats, which is a beautiful valley on the way to Te Anau.