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Published: September 9th 2008
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Queenstown, NZ (QT) 1
arriving in Queenstown Well, we're back in action to give you the exciting second edition to our whirlwind trip around the South Island of New Zealand. If you were able to make it through our lengthy "Part 1" to this story, you should be able to pick it right back up below as we leave Te Anau and head a couple hours North-East to Queenstown...
Queenstown's an active town and is known for it's skiing during the winter and extreme sports and activities year-round. It was one of the busiest areas we visited due to it being in the middle of the ski season. Heidi was contemplating the option of bungee jumping (as they have one of the tallest in the world from a crane into a gorge), but thought that the stress involved would defeat the purpose of the vacation atmosphere we were trying to promote. The alternative option was to go skiing and we ended up at a cross-country area called the Snow Farm. It was a massive resort of groomed trails on the top of a few mts. connected by long flat ridges. You could either do laps around some trails of varying degrees of difficulty near the ski lodge
QT 2
Cross Country skiing Snow Farm on top of this mtn. or head out in the back country on some longer trails that provided some really nice scenery. We got both sunshine and some fresh snow while we were out there and a great work out which felt nice after spending so much time in the car over the previous couple of days. That night we went to an amazing dinner in town at a French restaurant called Solera Vino where we dined on mussels in a cream sauce, wild hare, venison, and a cheese platter for desert. Tres bien!!
Another early morning found us driving up and out of Queenstown and through the ski town of Wanaka (on the other side of the snow fields). We stopped and had breakfast and decided that we would definitely spend more time in this quaint town next time through. The town is right on a large lake and surrounded by Mts that we stared out at in the early morning hours of the day drinking coffee and skipping rocks on the completely flat water. Definitely a less touristy feel than Queenstown, but just as accessible to the slopes. As we had a big day of driving ahead of us, we pressed on
towards the West coast and the two glaciers that were on the day's agenda.
After driving through breathtaking scenery the entire way (and stopping several times to let the cows cross the road), we took to a dirt path off the main road to go on a short trail to get a view of the first glacier, Fox Glacier. Excited to see one of these formations up close in order to get some more scale of their enormity, we headed another couple hours North to Franz Josef Glacier. Here we went on a two hour hike (round trip) to the base of the glacier where we saw it up close. The majority of the hike was up the river bed and glacial till that was created by the huge moving piece of ice (one of the fastest in the world at about 3 inches a day!) and the melt water coming out had a wonderful blue glow to it. Our day finished in the small town of Hokitika where we spent the night at the local hotel (pub) playing trivia with the locals. Needless to say, our New Zealand trivia skills were deficient in numerous different categories and the
one New Zealander that they put on our team out of good will couldn't do enough to get us out of 4th place of a 4 team competition (apparently their commercials, sports icons, political figures, and news events are nothing like the ones back in the states). We did find that all New Zealanders were extremely likeable people everywhere we went and all the ones we had interactions with were genuinely interested in getting to know a little about us and what we were up to in New Zealand (this ranged from hotel and b&b managers and customs agents, to taxi drivers and waiters).
Our final day in New Zealand consisted of a 4 hour drive back to Christchurch for a 3pm flight back to Sydney. Neither of us were expecting much seeing as our main goal was to arrive in time for the flight, but the drive ended up being one of the most scenic of the whole trip. We drove over an area called Arthur's Pass and went on a short hike up to the Devil's Punchbowl waterfall and pulled off the road in multiple spots to soak in the scenery and sunshine before we had to
leave.
Overall, it was an incredible trip and as we left it felt like we had only whetted our appetites in exploring this country. We look forward to going back to see more some time in the near future. There were tons of little trails and roads that led off to any number of other adventures that we didn't have time to explore and a longer trip during the Summer should allow us to experience other areas of this incredible country.
Until next time,
Matt and Heidi
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