Scenic Queenstown

When you land in Queenstown, the scenery and the very bumpy descent through a mountainous canyon take your breath away. Everywhere you go in New Zealand is scenic, but Queenstown is especially picturesque. Set on the shores of Lake Wakatipu and below the Southern Alps, the walk along the lake and into the botanic garden was gorgeous:

Queenstown seems touristy because it caters to adventure tourists all year round. Even though that’s not  our scene, we found plenty to keep us busy. We travelled on the TSS Earnslaw, a vintage steamship, across the lake to Walter Peak High Country Farm. Launched in 1912, the Earnslaw is the only remaining commercial passenger-carrying coal-fired steamship in the southern hemisphere and you can view the engine room, which operates precisely as it did when built.

The farm is the largest sheep station in NZ. We met a hungry Highland Cow, alpaca, a Jerusalem donkey, and sheep, of course.

But our favorite was Mia the sheepherding dog. We watched her bring a small group of sheep down the hill – it was impressive (even if the photo can’t do it justice):

Perhaps most impressive, was that Mia ran up the hill you see in the picture above in about 15 seconds!

We spent a long day getting out to see Milford Sound in the Fiordland National Park. We made several stops along the way to see wildflowers, raging rivers and, and met a Kea – a large native parrot.

Kea's are extremely smart animals. They have been known to work together to drag orange traffic cones into the road, causing traffic to stop and giving them an opportunity to get food from detained motorists. Pretty impressive for a bird.

The cruise in the sound itself was beautiful – serene water and raging waterfalls.

We’ll be honest – we had a great tour guide and a terrific small tour group of very interesting fellow travelers, but we don’t think spending 10 hours driving to do a 2-hour cruise in a beautiful location is worth it. If we could do it all over again, we would spend the night on a cruise ship in the Doubtful Sound and experience the national park that way. Live and learn!

The drive north of Queenstown to Glenorchy along the lake was amazing. We did the Lagoon Scenic Walkway, which is one of the many places in NZ where The Lord of the Rings movies were filmed.

We also enjoyed a walk along Bob’s Cove, a lovely lake inlet. The water was so inviting that I had to put my feet in.

We took another great hike in Arrowtown, one of many gold rush towns in the area, walking along the Arrow River.

And on the way out of town we stopped at a quintessential Qtown spot – the Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge, the birthplace of bungee jumping. That’s not either of us, we’re too chicken – or sane – to spend money jumping off a bridge.

One last thought – while in NZ you start to feel like you are far from everything, and as this sign near the Queenstown Airport shows, it’s true:

NZ’s population is just over 5 million, which is less than just the state of Washington. When you are in the remote regions of the South Island you can almost feel the isolation.

Cheers,

Shana & Jeff