Arrived to Sydney Airport early on the morning of the 16th to catch my flight to Queenstown. Bagged myself a emergency exit seat on the plane, meaning more leg room. Was sitting next to the one and only Matt McFadyen, the youngest Aussie to ski unassisted to the North Pole (not to be confused with Matthew MacFadyen, who was in Spooks...). He was off to give a speech at a pharmaceutical conference in Queenstown and he showed me his presentation, including videos of his expedition.
The descent into Queenstown airport was interesting, to say the least...cruising over the mountains with a fair bit of turbulence, before a steep descent onto the runway, but a more picturesque airport you will struggle to find. Picked up my rental car, which has all the mod-cons, including a tape deck, electric front windows and 7 different speeds of intermittent windscreen wiper-ing.
The hostel was excellent, ranked as the best hostel in the entire country, so I set the bar high very early, so will only be disappointed for the next 41 nights in other hostels...Queenstown itself is a lovely place, situated on the banks of Lake Wakatipu and surrounded by mountains.
The following day I went up on the Skyline Gondola to a lookout that gave views over the town and the lake. At the bottom of the gondola was a birdlife park, where they had many native NZ birds on show, all who were recovering from injuries or simply not up to living in the wild.
Drove south to Te Anau, 2 hours from Queenstown, but again, situated on a lake. Weather was much less attractive, and I experienced temperatures of under 20 degrees for the first time in a month!
Early start the following morning as I'd booked onto a coach trip to Milford Sound, 2 hours drive north west of Te Anau. Turned out there was only 2 of us on the tour, and the other person was Japanese and spoke very little English! Nevertheless, the driver, Bret, ploughed on, giving us (me) interesting information about the scenery along the road, the history of the Sound and the road itself and some inside secrets about the goings-on in the village of Milford Sound, that I doubt would make it onto the regular tour! Arrived at the sound in time for the 10.30 cruise, which took us up the sound and out onto the ocean. The scenery was stunning, with mile high mountains going vertically up on either side of us, and lots of waterfalls on either side due to the amount of recent rain.
The weather for the cruise wasn't great, with rain showers coming and going throughout, but that was unsurprising given that it rains 200 days a year, and the Fiordland area gets an average of 7 METRES of rain a year, with the record being nearly 15 metres in the 1980s.
Left Te Anau the next morning, heading back north, stopping for lunch in Arrowtown, and old gold mining village that has kept its old buildings for its new shops. Continued up highway 8 on my way to Lake Tekapo, only to find that the road was closed due to a fatal crash an hour north of Cromwell. Decided that it was not worth continuing up that night, as the road would not open until after 7pm, and I was there at 2pm, so I headed back to Cromwell to find a place to stay for the night, which ended up being a chalet on a holiday camp that was like something out of Hi-de-Hi, but still, it was cheap and reasonable. Continued my journey up highway 8 the next day, as it had re-opened, and I headed up to Mount Cook village, where they had a museum named after Sir Edmund Hilary, which contained pictures of him on his everest climb, as well as his climbs of Mt Cook itself. Couldn't actually see the mountain due to clouds, but the views around were still good.
No comments:
Post a Comment