Day 30: Adventures in Queenstown

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Queenstown Strikes Back

At 3:45 p.m. on Dec. 28th I reluctantly got up from the fireside at YHA Te Anau. At 4 p.m. I rolled my suitcase down the entrance ramp. I needed to be four blocks away, at Kiwi Country, by 5. I figured I'd probably get there about 4:30.

I got there at 4:10. I suppose it's a combination of my being in slightly better shape and the medicine bag being noticeably lighter; I discarded several empty bottles today.

I had supper (another cranberry chicken sandwich, which didn't go down well at all, and hot choc, which did) and I sat there fretting over the possibility that the Great Sights coach might come in on the other side of Kiwi Country, which is a pretty big store, while I was waiting on the cafe side. The ice-cream vendor who helped me before told me that I would see the bus from the cafe side because all buses had to approach from that direction, so I stayed there.

Bus after bus came and went, and I started up in alarm each time. Finally the Great Sights bus came into view. The driver got off and said, "Sorry, I'm not the one; you're booked on the overflow bus."

Luckily, another passenger was also getting on, so I had some confidence that we would not be forgotten. Nevertheless I waited nervously. No second Great Sights bus appeared. Finally the driver of the first Great Sights coach, who was just finishing up his rest stop, told us that the overflow bus was not labelled "Great Sights," and that it was actually already here; the driver was inside Kiwi Country taking his rest stop.

The driver told us it was bus 155, so we set off to look for it. (It's a good thing the other passenger was there, as I thought he said "154.") It turned out to be labelled "Grand Pacific Tours." We had to wait until the driver finished his rest stop, and then until all the original passengers returned, to board, but once we got on it was worth it. I had a double seat to myself, and it was a much plusher bus than the Newman's buses (and I'd thought they were pretty plush themselves).

The Grand Pacific bus had a TV in the front of the bus, and as we rode the driver ran a DVD of an award-winning New Zealand movie, "Whale Rider." Its plot could have been written by Mercedes Lackey or Tamora Pierce: plucky Maori girl overcomes gender barriers to become a great leader of her people. I liked it.

When we got to Queenstown, the driver very kindly dropped me right at the door of the YHA. I wondered afterwards if I ought to have had a tip ready; tipping is not usual in New Zealand but, say the guidebooks, you can tip for truly excellent service.
I didn't think of it in time, though.

Unfortunately, at the YHA, things went downhill fast. I got supper from KFC, showered, and got into my pajamas. Then I settled down for a nice cozy Internet chat with Jim, planning to chat until I was too sleepy to talk, which I thought wouldn't take long.

No Internet. Five bars glowed green, but there was a handshake problem; my laptop wouldn't connect. I knew the fault wasn't in my laptop, as I had been connecting to the same ISP only three hours ago in Te Anau, and for that matter I had connected quite readily in this very hostel last week.

I told the desk, and they said to call Global Gossip's tech support. There was a dedicated phone for this purpose. I did. They wouldn't speak to me unless I could tell them my YHAConnect access number. Back up six flights of stairs I went to get it. Back up six flights of stairs I went again, because I'd been so agitated the first time I'd left my room key lying by the dedicated phone.

When I'd finally established that, yes, I was a YHAConnect customer, it was 8:30; half an hour until Reception closed. No problem, right? Wrong. It took me a solid hour of actually talking to their lowest-tier tech support to convince the fellow that the problem was not with my laptop. There were long pauses while he asked someone else what to do, followed by, e.g., directions to clear my cache, etc., etc. Later he claimed that this was because the wi-fi looked perfectly fine to him, but if it did he was either reading something wrong or forgetting to check to see whether the server was issuing any new leases.

At 9:30, half an hour after Reception closed, Sarah, the last clerk on day duty, finished closing up for the day and left. I asked her, as she left, whether there was anything she could reboot, and she assured me quite confidently and quite incorrectly that everything was handled remotely.

At 9:35, the tech support person finally admitted that there appeared to be a problem with the Queenstown YHA's Internet connectivity. He asked me to wait 20 minutes and call him back to give them time to troubleshoot the problem.

At 9:55, I called them back, and the tech told me that there was nothing he could do because the next step in troubleshooting called for the wireless access points in the building to be rebooted, and Reception would not answer.

I babbled something incoherent into the phone for a few moments, and then calmed down enough to ask whether, if I could get a staff person for him, he would tell her what to do. He said he would.

I went up and knocked on the night duty manager's door. She was the same person who had helped me with my roommate problem last time. Her name was, I think, Shereen. She did not quite understand what I was trying to tell her, and she came downstairs only because she thought Sarah, the day clerk, wanted her for something, but she agreed to listen to the Global Gossip tech.

He walked her through first power-resetting all the WAPs in the building and then, when that didn't work, disconnecting them. That didn't work either.
Then he said a technician would be sent out in the morning.

Shereen told me that I could go over to Base Queenstown, a hostel just across the road, and use my Global Gossip account there. I hated the idea of going out into Queenstown streets after dark, and I hated the idea of going to Base Queenstown, which has a reputation as a party hostel, but I knew Jim would be frantic and I was pretty upset myself. I went. I had no trouble reaching Jim. I stayed as long as I could stand the drunks and the loud music, and then I came back and went to bed.

In the morning, I checked with Shereen, who was at the Reception desk, to see when the tech was to come. She said she didn't know, but she assured me that one would come, that the YHA would not let the wireless be down another night.

Sadly, when I got back from the day's excursions, the wireless was still down. I called Global Gossip and complained, and they gave me a $10 credit, which amounts to giving me the time I spent online at Base for free. I suppose that is fair recompense, but it is a great disappointment.

Just to make everything perfect, as I was walking through Base Queenstown's lobby, I brushed against a heavy sandwich-board sign, and it folded up and fell on my foot, digging in to the side of my left ankle. I had sprained that ankle earlier this year, and the resultant bruising seemed to reactivate the sprain. So for the rest of my stay in Queenstown, my putatively good leg could be relied on no more than my bad leg.

The only good thing that came of the Queenstown net outage was that, while I was over in Base Queenstown the next morning, I met one of the Asian students from Pinot Lodge. She was on her way back to Malaysia. I was glad to see her again, and very glad she had recognized me and spoken.

Onsen Hot Pools Again

This time I was the only 11 a.m. appointment from Christchurch to be picked up, so I got to ride to the Onsen Hot Pools site in a snazzy blue convertible driven by the business' owner. I chatted with him on the way; he'd spent several years in California.

I was in pool #1, rather than pool #6 -- a better view of the mountains, but not quite as good of the river. The sun was shining brightly. I dithered a bit about whether to wear my swimsuit, but I decided that there was too much risk of sunburn if I didn't.

Good thing I did. Almost as soon as I got into the water, a man appeared outside my window. I was quite startled. After a few moments he saw me, and he looked as surprised as I was. He apologized and left at once.

I met him afterwards; he was the owner's father, there for Christmas and helping out around the place. He hadn't realized the pools had opened for the day, and a gutter was clogged, so he was cleaning it out. He was kind enough to carry the bag with my wet swimsuit in it up the hill for me.

Last week I'd spent most of my time with my glasses off and the roof shut, breathing steam. This time I kept my glasses on and the roof open. I spent most of my time bobbing up and down and looking at the view.

Just as before, it was a great way to spend an hour.
This time I only had a bottle of water, not an organic juice drink nor a hot choc, but I splurged on towel rental. I had a snowy white towel, large and fluffy.

The Earnslaw and Walter Peak Farm

I was dropped off at the YHA about 12:30. Regrettably, I couldn't check into my room until 2:30. I left my wet swimsuit bag in the luggage-storage room, and went off to find the Earnslaw, a steamship built in 1912 that's now used as a tourist attraction.

If I hadn't prebooked it, I wouldn't have gone; I was pretty well excursioned out, and my left ankle hurt. But I had, so I did. It had a sloping gangway, just as the Patea Explorer had had, though it wasn't nearly as steep. I was so concerned about the slope that I didn't allow for the step up at the start (remember, I can't see these things; my depth perception is terrible) and the next thing I knew I was lying down on the gangplank. I wasn't flat on my face this time; I'd twisted in the air and come down on my back. Fortunately (since the harbor was around me on either side!), I had held onto both my ticket and my walking stick, and my hat had stayed on my head.

The crew helped me up, and one of them was detailed to see me safely to a seat in the saloon. As before, I sat downstairs while almost everyone else went up. This time I went up too, once, after the solicitous crew member had gone, just to see what it was like, but I wished I hadn't because the stairs were precipitous. I made it down safely and did not attempt the climb again. The only advantage I could see to being up top was that you could take better photographs; the downstairs saloon was surrounded by a promenade, which meant that you were looking, and photographing, through windows recessed about a yard from the side of the boat.

The steamship, which vibrated much more than I'd expected, took us to Walter Peak High Country Farm, a dude ranch and tourist trap on the side of (what else) Walter Peak. As our guide explained, Walter Peak Station really is a working farm, but the tourists' part is run separately and everything there is for show.

It was amusing, and probably worth what I paid for it; it was much less expensive than, say, the Doubtful Sound cruise. I got to pet red deer and Highland cattle and lots and lots of lambs. I got to feed the lambs, too, though I only fed them two handfuls of their kibble as there were many children on the trip and I felt the feeding was mostly meant for them. At least, most of the grown-ups were content to stand back and photograph their kids with the sheep.

We were given afternoon tea in the house that used to be the station owners' residence. It was good; they had more of those whipped-cream treats that were served at the Nativity in Cromwell. I skipped the tea and coffee, of course, but they also had yellow-orange juice (I'm not sure what it was; it tasted weird) and ice water.

After tea we were shown a brief herding demonstration, and then our guide sheared a sheep for us. As a finale, we were enticed into the gift shop (of course) to see a demonstration of spinning. I had seen spinning several times before, and I was pretty tired, so I looked to see whether by any chance they had any woolen hats that would fit me (they didn't) and then I walked down to the pier to wait for the boat.

The ride back was much the same as the ride out, except that I didn't fall on the gangplank again, and I stayed downstairs in the saloon for the whole trip.

On the way to the Earnslaw, I had stopped to have lunch at a fish-'n'-chips place called the Hoki Doki. They explained, in some embarrassment, that they had no fish; it was their habit to buy it fresh from the docks and no one had come in yet that day, they thought because of the holiday.

I had a hamburger. It was two dollars cheaper than Fergburger's and a whole lot better. It came with a tasty salad in red wine vinaigrette. I'd asked simply for tap water, and it was served chilled in a carafe.

I liked the place so much that I stopped by again for dinner. I began to order another burger, but the waitress stopped me and said happily, "We have fish now!" So of course I bought the fish, and asked for exactly the same sort of salad as a side item. It was good, too. I got it to go, and had the fish for dinner and the salad and chips for breakfast.

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Photos

Kiwi statue
on the waterfront

Comments

[David Lowthian]

Global Gossip
I am sorry to hear about your experience with Global Gossip Support. Here at Global Gossip we are constantly striding to provide the best support possible, I am not sure why you slipped through the cracks but if you email me with your YHA card number I will do my best to try and compensate you. Dave Global Gossip

[bbaggins]

I tried to e-mail you, and my message bounced. I cut-and-pasted the e-address you gave, too. The error was "Domain Name Not Found." I'm sorry to say it, but this does not improve my opinion of Global Gossip!