The Great Outdoors in Queenstown

The very first thing that I discovered is that you need at least two weeks to see all of New Zealand and even that is probably rushing it. I had four days plus the equivalent of a travel day, so all I could do was visit Queenstown and rush through Wellington, the capitol of the country, in one afternoon. But from people who I spoke with while there, if you could choose only one town to visit in NZ, Queenstown should be it, so Julie, you were right!!!

Thanks to my friend, Fredric, I stayed at a delightful Bed and Breakfast called Larch Hill which is just outside of town and has incredible views of Wakatipu Lake and the Remarkable Mountains from almost every room. (Check it out on Wotif.com!) The B&B is on a cul-de-sac just above the main road into town with wonderful bus service (#10 or #11) that will drop you off at the bottom of the hill even though it is not a bus stop (which should tell you a bit about the people there). One of the owners, Lesley (her husband, Chris, was out of town) picked me up at the airport , gave me brochures and maps and a quick orientation about Queenstown's layout, and then, after I dropped off my luggage, drove me to the gondola above town so that I could go up the mountain to get an overview of Queenstown.

Wow! First of all, a women was bungey jumping off a platform near the top of the gondola, people were "luging" - as in "luge" - down the mountain from above the gondola platform, people were parasailing and paragliding, and sheep were cropping the grass down the slope. I hadn't been there more than 45 minutes!! But is was clear that there is something for everyone in Queenstown!!!

For the three days that I was in Queenstown, here is what I did. I flew in a small twin-engined plane over the mountains, alpine lakes and glaciers of Fiordland National Park, a World Heritage site, to Milford Sound, got bitten by sand flies (you need to take bug juice if you go here - they were not kidding and I had welts for three weeks to prove it), rode a jet boat on the Dart River (Julie, this was a total BLAST!!!), had a float in a floatation tank, had a pedicure with black toenail polish (I figured no one that I knew would see me (:-), bought a pair of shoes, drank the local ale, and finally, I took a bus ride to Manapouri Lake, took a ferry across that lake, took another bus ride over the Walmont Pass in the cool temperate rainforest-cladded mountains, then got on a cruise boat and cruised in Doubtful Sound for three hours. I would not have even known about Doubtful Sound had it not been for Fredric, so thank you, Fredric!!  The only way that you can get there is via the route that I took or from the Tasman Sea.  The mountains are so steep that you cannot hike in, like you can at Milford Sound via the Milford Track (Frannie can tell you all about this, huh, Fran?). I did not think that any natural place could astound me more than the Grand Canyon or Yosemite, (and now the Great Barrier Reef, but I am getting ahead of myself!!)but Milford Sound is a once in a lifetime experience. On our way back, we visited an unmanned, underground power station on Lake Manapouri that produces enough electricity for one-third of New Zealand (there are only a total of four million people spread over the two islands). Whew. All that in three days. How about that? I even read an entire mystery called The Codex that I bought at a used bookstore in Sydney called Elizabeth's - very good.

Sights= backpackers, Maoris, tatoos, body piercings, shorts and flip flops, gondolas,jet boats, city harbors, world class museums, cable cars, Merino sheep, Angus and Hereford cattle, lots of pubs, incredibly beautiful alpine and glacier-fed lakes, glaciers, mountain terrain, fiords and sounds, women of all ages in skirts and either footless leggings or pants (a new fashion statement?), red deer, waterfalls, Hawthorne, Gum, Sequoia, Eucalyptus, Poplar, Thorn and So. Antarctic and Red Beech trees, NZ Flax in the wild, the Tasman Sea, trees growing out of very steep mountain sides anchored only to lichen and moss, a bad grass fire being fought by helicopters scooping water out of a lake with big red buckets, paragliding, parasailing, hot-air ballooning, Toots, a Maori man whose face and arms were decorated with tatoos as is the tradition for Maoris as a map of his story and faith (I told him he was absolutely gorgeous. He was from the Bay of Plenty on the North Island)

Sounds= the wind in the trees, people screaming as they bungey jump, people drinking and singing on St. Patrick's Day, luges rushing down a luge track, ferry, jet and cruise boat engines, airplane engines, birds chirping, bus doors opening and closing, Ta=thanks, absolutely nothing when I did the floatation tank, blessings from a Great Grandmother, born again Baptist taxi driver named Sera who told me she would pray for me for a safe trip and a happy life, Aotearoa=New Zealand in Maori, the story that NZ was part of Gondawanaland along with South America, Africa, India, Antarctic, and Australia and when they slpit 60 million years ago, mammals had not evolved, so New Zealand had no mammals, only birds and slippery eels and crawfish until animals were introduced by the Maoris 700 years ago and Europeans 400 years ago

Tastes= orange-mango juice, incredible pizza and local ale, gelato, NZ Cabernet-Merlot Blend called Main Divide

Smells=salt air, lake air, fish