Advertisement
Published: January 23rd 2010
Approaching Mt. Aspiring
This huge meadow was used as the backdrop for Isengard in the Lord of the Rings - the tower and large trees were digitally added, of course!Q: If you worked at Burger King, and a customer ordered a "cheeseburger with only ketchup," which of the following would you
not serve them?
A. The bun
B. The burger
C. The cheese
D. The ketchup
If you're logical, you're confused right now, thinking, "I would serve all those components of the burger!" Apparently, though, if you work at a Burger King in New Zealand, the correct answer to the question is: B. I received a "cheeseburger" that had a bun, cheese, and ketchup...and NO BURGER. When I tried to explain this to the girl at the counter, she gave me the most bizarre look and said, "But you didn't ask for the meat."
Well. Silly me for assuming that when ordering a
burger, I had to specify that I wanted a burger patty on it! I mean...really? The manager walked over a minute later with a very apologetic smile, rolled his eyes, and mouthed, "Sorry," handing me my burger that actually - gasp! - had a BURGER on it! (I
was in Burger King, was I not?) That was the kind of cultural
faux pas I was expecting in China, not New Zealand! Ah, that moment
will never stop being funny...
So, on that note, how do you like the panorama of Queenstown up there? I finally (three months later) figured out how to re-size all the panorama photos I've been taking so that travelblog would accept them. At last, success!! Perhaps with my oodles of free time these days, I will upload some other nice panoramas for you. It's not like we have JOBS or anything...sigh...I just looked at the count-up on our homepage and realized that as of today, we've been gone for exactly 101 days. When did that happen??
But anyway. You want to hear all about our glorious three days in Queenstown and the cool stuff we saw there. We awoke Wednesday morning to (surprise, surprise) rain and overcast. Threw our stuff in the car anyway and prayed it would be nicer out west. Three hours and a lot of drizzle later, we rolled into the mountains and up to Queenstown. Our first "stop" was out of our Lord of the Rings book, trying to find the access road to the top of this very prominent hill on the lakeside...drove in circles for half an hour until we finally erupted
into the dumbest argument ever and called off the search. Not the best way to start our anniversary ha!
We headed through Queenstown and along a few miles further to our hotel, which was situated out by a big ski field (only open June-September, go wrap your brain around that one!). Our funky little hotel had an entire bowling alley inside it, of all things! As much as we love bowling, though, we didn't want to waste any time hanging out in our room (we do enough of that in Balclutha, thank you very much!) so off we went to check out the town. It's small, with only about 13,000 people, but has all the comforts and amenities of any large touristy area - lots of restaurants, shops, cinemas, day spas, and of course every reckless activity known to man. Queenstown is the "thrill capital of the world," supposedly - if you want to sky-dive, bungy, base-jump, paraglide, parachute, rock-climb, rappel, or any other goofy thing you've never even
heard off, this is your place!
While deciding which (if any) crazy sport we were going to pursue, we found ourselves irresistibly drawn to a Mexican restaurant in town
called "Sombreros." We hoped that perhaps it would be as good as our beloved Mexican cantina in Christchurch (the one we ate at three days in a row ha!), but alas, no such luck. It was tasty, of course, and it beat the heck out of meat and potatoes or gluten-free pizzas...but we found it quite bland. Our waiter asked if we wanted mild, medium, or hot, and we just kind of grinned. (The Kiwis definitely do NOT have a palate for the spicy - we bought a jar of hot salsa at the supermarket and it was not even on par with our mediums back home.) So we ordered everything hot, and once again, found ourselves looking at each other like, "That's it?" Luckily we had a bin full of hot sauces on the table to add our own spice (even a local blend of habañero pepper and kiwifruit - sweet and spicy, yum!). Ah, nothing like bland Mexcian food in New Zealand to celebrate your anniversary! After dinner we walked around town for a bit, but we were still battling the drizzle so we called it an early night.
The next morning, opting to keep our feet
on the ground (kind of), we chose to go jetboating through Shotover Canyon for our wild and crazy Queenstown experience. A jetboat is basically a big wave-runner or jet-ski that holds about twenty people and has incredible maneuvering capabilities. Your crazy Kiwi driver guides the jetboat through a ridiculously narrow canyon and small rapids at blindingly fast speeds. At certain points you think the boat is going to crash right into a cliff face, but at the last second, the driver actually turns the nose of the boat INTO the wall, swinging the back end out and away from the wall and missing it by what feels like mere inches. The boats will even perform a complete 360-degree spin at high speed. It was so much fun!! It sounds terrifying (and we figured it would be), but instead we found ourselves giggling and screeching like we were on a big wet roller coaster. It was a blast (and much tamer than jumping out of an airplane)!
Riding the high from our jetboating excursion, we headed into town (under much sunnier and warmer skies!) and found ourselves at a French crepe stand run by a whole gaggle of Hungarians (yeah,
we don't get it either). The sign for "gluten-free crepes" drew us in like moths to electric bug-zappers, and a friendly Hungarian with long dreadlocks whipped us up two Nutella crepes and told us (sounding more Jamaican than Hungarian) to "Spread the crepe love!" (This is what happens when you backpack for too long...) A quick sugar-high later, we were galloping uphill to the base of the Queenstown Skyline (also known as a gondola, cable car, or funicular).
You'd think ski-crazy Queenstown would be way up in elevation, like Aspen or Vail. But alas, like Wanaka, it sits a mere 1,000 feet above sea level. The gondola shoots up to a mountainside 2,500 feet above sea level, which gives a spectacular view over the entire city, lake, and surrounding mountains (aptly named "The Remarkables"). Up top you will find a restaurant, luge track (like go-karts), bungy jumping, sky swings, a helicopter pad, and paragliders soaring off above your head towards the lake and town below. It's quite a sight to behold, especially on the beautiful day that we had! We enjoyed the lunch buffet at the restaurant, chowing down on green-lip mussels, piquant shrimp, salmon, caesar salads, creme brulee,
and the ever-present national dessert pavlova (the lovely whipped meringue-like dessert from a few blogs back). Lunch with a view, what's not to like?
Upon descending to town again, we hopped in the car and began a long, leisurely drive along to the lake to the northern shore, and a tiny alpine town called Glenorchy. What's in Glenorchy? Not much, I'll admit. But you're surrounded by soaring peaks on three sides and the tranquil lake on the other. We strolled to the end of the pier and sat in the sun for a while, relishing the view and watching in shock and horror the kite-boarder and the
swimmer out on the lake. We watched this guy swim the width of the 53-degree-year-round lake (this is a BIG lake, mind you), all the way up to the pier and hoist himself out. We complimented him on his swim, figuring he must be a Kiwi, but when he spoke, an American accent came out! Turns out, he's here from California cycling the entire south island for three months (after just finishing four months around Australia). Nice guy. Good to meet a fellow American every now and then who has something to
talk about other than farming.
(For our fellow Lord of the Rings fans, I've captioned all the photos of spots we visited that were used in the movie. Queenstown/Glenorchy area is loaded with them!)
Leaving Glenorchy, we continued heading north on a dirt road until it ended at Mt. Aspiring National Park. Why does that sound familiar? It is the same national park we hiked to from Wanaka, where we found that enormous waterfall. Except now, we were on the other side of the mountain and the other side of the national park! Funnily enough, we were only about ten miles from the road to Milford Sound, as well (near Te Anau), but the mountains are so high through that area, that you have to drive a huge four-hour loop south, west, and back north to get there! Apparently they've been trying to find a way to build a road from Glenorchy to Milford Sound to save everyone the hours of driving, but they've not yet found a way.
Anyway. Spent the rest of the afternoon doing a little hiking and photography before heading back to Queenstown for one more night. Stopped to get a bottle of
wine and were I.D.'ed for the first time in New Zealand (the drinking age is 18, mind you). Then we were told that they couldn't accept foreign driver's licenses, only passports! Not having our passports on us, we huffed out of the store and across the street to a different one, where I painlessly picked one up without being I.D.'ed (though at my age, being mistaken for a teenager didn't bother me all that much ha)!
The next morning we awoke to more rain and overcast. Blah. Attempted to find the access road to the filming location we'd tried to find on our way in two days prior and got in yet
another stupid argument (Jeremy and I never fight, by the way). At last, almost by accident, we found it, only to discover that it was now closed to the public. Argh! Then we got back on the road and drove about fifteen minutes in the wrong direction. Double argh!!
We turned around and off we went to Arrowtown, a tiny town about twenty minutes north known for its spectacular foliage in the autumn months (we hope to go back in April if we're still in the
area). It was an old gold-mining town and you can still try your hand at gold-panning if you want! Our mission was to find a few more LOTR locations (which we did, very easily this time!) and lunch consisting of mince pies (kind of like our pot-pies back home). Jeremy even got a gluten-free one! After Arrowtown we headed due east for about an hour and turned off at Alexandra for yet another LOTR sight...it was quite out of the way, but we had the whole day to kill so we figured, why not? Beautiful stark scenery, with bizarre staggered rock formations. Worth the long drive for sure.
And then back to sleepy little Balclutha late last night! This morning we were hit with three blows in a row:
1. We thought for sure we'd secured two weeks of vineyard work further up the island beginning the first of February, but we got the news that it fell through.
2. We received a letter from the power company that our payment for our deposit had
not been received (we thought we'd set up the automatic payments properly but apparently not!) and our power will be cut on Monday
unless we pay, and oh yes...here's a late fee while we're at it!
3. Our computer mysteriously froze in a loop of rebooting itself and we couldn't figure it out for most of the day (Jeremy, in between fits of hysteria at having our only connection to the outside world severed, thankfully managed to diagnose and fix the problem). I told him to cheer up, the closest HP store was in Honolulu!! (My joke did not go over too well at the time).
😱
Feeling ridiculously down in the dumps, we hightailed it up to Kate and Steve's farm to help them pick vegetables and do some farm chores. I even - get this - milked the cow! I must admit, it is not as easy as it looks! It's a sort of squeezing motion with your outer three fingers, while your thumb and forefinger hold the teat steady. A little tricky, but I got enough milk out for about two cups of coffee ha! I was quite proud of myself. We stayed for dinner and played a couple rounds of Chinese checkers, and by the end of the day were feeling much, much better about our situation.
So where are we now? Well, Jeremy does in fact have a job interview on Monday with a construction firm in Milton (where Kate and Steve live, about twenty minutes from here) to do office admin. We're very much hoping he gets it, because if not, we'll more than likely be packing up and heading up the road within the next week or so. Our visas specify that we must hold a certain account balance to support ourselves, and we're getting dangerously close to that dollar amount. The two-week vineyard contract would have been the perfect boost to our bank account - enough to keep us going for probably several months down here. But if Jeremy can get the steady job locally, that will be good enough for now. Unfortunately, that would leave me searching for jobs within walking distance of our flat, though luckily we live right on the main street. We'll see how it all plays out! So either Jeremy gets the job in Milton and we hang here for a while longer, or we pull anchor and try another area. We will of course keep you updated in our next blog!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.106s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 14; qc: 33; dbt: 0.044s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sandra Sandman
non-member comment
HEEEEY!
Hey guys! Its sandra from sweden talking :) meet you at Lena and Jeremys house awhile ago. It lookis like you guys are having a blast, wow, Im impressed that you have been travelling this much and that you are planning to be gone for so long. I dont know how you do it but you do it good! Nice to follow you on your journey! Continue to have a wonderful time and take care of eachother! Love sandra the swede :)