* Hence this is a bit of a long post after a few days of nothing, sorry.
It's only a small town but the central area appears to be entirely composed of shops (fun rather than practical, i.e. Lilly's kind of place), restaurants, bars and activity/tour companies, so it feels like a place set up entirely for tourists. And why not? It's on a huge, beautiful lake and surrounded by scenic mountains.
On our way to Queenstown we took the scenic route, rather than the longer but quicker highway, and boy it was scenic. We stopped for lunch at the Cardrona Hotel - not many pubs are built over an old gold mine shaft and still display it in the floor. It feels like a tiny abandoned township from the Old West outside (I'm not sure if the Post Office, general store etc were just closed when we passed through or merely well-preserved unused buildings) but the beer garden was a great spot for lunch.
We continued a lovely drive full of views and switchbacks to picturesque Arrowtown - like a little village that has been waiting patiently in its Sunday best for a century for history to drop by and pick it up. It also features a preserved/restored Chinese settlement which is of so little interest that it made me think NZ must have a shortage of things to preserve.
Look - no, really - it's a hut!!
The town somehow supports its own microbrewery and a really cute little boutique cinema - the main screening room was small, but we went in the second screen which seats about 14, and being the first ones there we were able to grab the sofa to watch The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (sorry UK folks, not out yet back home, but it's a decent and visually stylish compression of an overlong and over-rated novel). I doubt this cinema - or at least the second screen - would have been possible pre-digital distribution - it wouldn't have been worth sending an expensive can of film out here for 8 people to watch, so here's a little bit of progress making a historic town a better place to be.
Queenstown itself is NZ's adrenaline town - possibly the adventure sports capital of the world - but all of that takes place a bit out of town (I meant to go and watch a bungee jump but ran out of time), whereas by the lakefront it can feel a very peaceful place and there are tourists of all ages.
On Saturday we took it easy - explored town and went on a boat cruise across Lake Wakatipu on an old steamship (the trip is nice but felt a little redundant the next day when we drove past the same views - but fun to see the coal shovelled and pistons pumped, etc).
We also investigated a Queenstown phenomenon. Now, everybody knows that the best takeaway burger in the world can be bought at Pepper's in Oxford, but Fergburger gives it a good run for its money. It has apparently "seen off" Burger King and Hard Rock from town, and seems to have a constant crowd waiting for their orders no matter what time of day. It has a variety of burgers, great buns, punning names (eg The Codfather for a fish burger) and I really wish there was a branch near me. (But the chips are too salty so Pepper's retains its #1 spot on a tiebreak.)
On Sunday we drove up the east shore of the lake, a beautiful undulating road, to Glenorchy, where we had a picnic lunch and did pretty much nothing. Driving is a real pleasure in NZ - we haven't heard a single horn (our nightmares filled with car horns from Mumbai and Ho Chi Minh City gradually receding) and when you get stuck behind a slower vehicle, more often than not it will pull over to let you pass at the first opportunity. I couldn't quite believe it the first time I saw it.
On Monday we finally did something exciting with a spot of white water rafting. We had spotted an itinerary which followed a scenic gorge as used in Lord of the Rings, with gentle rapids, ideal for first time rafters.
But apparently that's not exciting enough so they only do it once a week, and we had to go on a proper rafting trip.
My favourite bit was actually the drive up (I should note that Lilly absolutely loved the rafting itself so this is just my opinion) - an old 2WD minibus dragging a trailer full of 6-man rafts, following a narrow road that a mountain goat would balk at, up and down steep hills and hairpin turns. Bits of the road regularly crumble away. At one point our guide opened the door so we could see tyre-tracks leading off the side of the cliff.
In our raft (one of 8) we were grouped with an older British couple and two Korean girls - all in all, not the most power-packed raft on the river. Our American rafting guide was initially annoying - I can imagine her as a frustrated teacher who is really competitive but isn't allowed to make games properly competitive, saying things like "It's important we try really hard, so even if we're not very good, at least we can say we tried."
I'm told that rafting is most fun when water is either high, so there's lots of it, or low, so there are more rocks in play and smaller gaps and generally more chance of capsizing. In between, it's not as good. And the water is very low at this time of year.
Apparently the key to successful rafting, bearing in mind that you are holding a paddle with both hands, sitting on the edge of a rubber boat and getting thrown around, is to wedge your feet firmly into the edges of the raft. This may be fine if you have well-formed knees. It is quickly agonising if you are me or Lilly. Still, we quickly learned all the requisite commands and manoeuvres, apart from "Hold on, get down!" where the survival instinct faces off against the fact that the available area to get down in is far smaller than the volume of rafter trying to get down in it, and said rafters start with their feet wedged underneath them.
We were rafting through a reasonably scenic gorge - sadly we were too preoccupied to take in the most scenic bits, although we did have time to notice a pair of mountin' goats* and some gold-fishers** - and quickly realised that we were mostly more stable than we'd expected. We could plop over tiny waterfalls with no problem, and get soaked unexpectedly. We even got through our first rapids without incident (although I was at the front and got soaked) - quite exciting and 20 seconds later I had blinked the water out of my contact lenses and could see again.
* I made this joke in real life. Lilly was very proud.
** This is gold-mining country. Further mining was relatively recently banned but we saw a couple of guys in wetsuits and snorkels looking for gold on the riverbed.
Unfortunately at our second set of rapids we found ourselves wedged sideways, at a 45 degree angle, on a big rock, with water pouring into the raft and, perhaps due to the inability to hear a screechy little American voice over the noise of the water, or slow reactions, or certain people not knowing their left from their right, we had to abandon raft and clamber onto the rock while the raft flipped.
No big deal, and our guide leapt into action (literally, as the raft floated off) and we were able to climb back into it. Since my seat was closest to the rock, I let everyone else in first. This proved to be an error as the penultimate rafter managed to fall into the water and, as they pulled him in, the raft floated off, leaving me marooned on the rock amidst a rush of water that made it impossible for our raft to come back.
The only way to get back to the raft was to get a lift from the support kayak. Well, 'lift' in this instance meaning jump into the water, grab the front of the kayak, lie underneath its nose and grip both sides with your feet. You can find a picture of me doing this at www.undignified.com.* I rounded the corner to meet up with my raftmates and the raft ahead of us, who hadn't seen what had happened, and assumed I had fallen in.** We then watched another 6 rafts come round, willing them to capsize. None of them did. Bah.
* Note to the literal-minded: you cannot really find a picture of me doing this.
** At the end of the trip, noting my wet state, someone asked if I had fallen in. "Sort of," said my loyal wife, who is, if you need reminding, ONE OF THE VERY PEOPLE WHO ABANDONED ME ON A ROCK LEAVING ME SOAKING WET THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN, AND I HAD IN NO WAY FALLEN IN. But that's ok - it was fun taking my little rubber boots off to empty the water out of them.
Fortunately we did a lot better down the remaining rapids and through a tunnel. As we splashed down at the last rapids, I managed to duck and a huge wave went right over me and soaked Lilly. Sorry honey. All good fun - apart from my hands being eaten by sandflies. (I hate sandflies.) There had been a reasonably scary safety briefing but the reality turned out to be fairly manageable. Rapids are rated on a scale 1-6 (where 6 is Niagara Falls) and we got as far as a 3-4, so not bad. The only real downside was that we felt too much of a convoy as we went along the scenic parts - a smaller group would have had a different feel.
The previous evening we had explored the park and gardens and discovered what claims to be the world's first fully marked-out 18-hole frisbee golf course, so we had to try this out on Monday afternoon (after a quick Ferburger). You can probably imagine the rules.*
* But for those who can't, you have to hit a marked post or tree, or get the frisbee into a basket; you take your second shot from where the first shot finished, etc; and you score it like golf.
Some people take this pretty seriously - I hadn't realised until I went into a shop to buy/rent frisbees and was asked what type I wanted. We saw several people carrying round whole sets of frisbees - you can buy golf bag equivalents - one for long tee shots, one for mid-distances, one for 'putting', etc.
It will surprise nobody to learn that we were rubbish. We didn't quite lose our frisbees but we did both get them stuck on top of a 15-foot rock at one point. But at least we made it round the course.
Finally, Lilly very much enjoyed a wine-tasting concept store - it has lots of display bottles in dispensers, you use a smartcard to buy each tasting-sized portion, and at the end you get a printout of everything you've tried and a (probably hefty) bill and the chance to buy anything you've tasted. As a bonus it's run by a man who could be used as inspiration if you were making a film and wanted to establish in 20 seconds or less that a minor character is the quintessential wine buff.
Fun place, Queenstown, and even for a small town we left it thinking that there was plenty more we could have done there. But we have a trip on Milford Sound booked, so onwards it is.
I omitted to mention Puzzling World in Wanaka, just north of Queenstown, which is full of puzzles, mazes, and optical illusions - Lilly loves it mainly for this trompe l'oeil photo:
Yes, we are both the same distance from the camera
Postscript - unrelated to QT but I was reminded of it because like Rotorua it has a Skyline gondola and luge ride - on a riverbank in Hiroshima we read about an anti-nuclear gesture whereby they sent cherry blossoms (emblematic of Japan) to New Zealand. At the Skyline in Rotorua we stumbled across those cherry blossom trees, which was a nice reminder of Japan.
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