Part 3: Queenstown

When you talk to other tourists in NZ, Queenstown is like a point on a pilgrimage road - some kind of Holy Land of outdoor activity that might hold Sir Edmund Hilary's ashes inside a quad helmet. Everyone's going to Queenstown. Or they're on their way home, and they're broke. 

Considering the hype, I was pleasantly surprised at how small it was. Downtown Queenstown is a half-mile grid of a few busy streets packed with cafés and outdoor shops snuggled up against sapphire-blue Lake Wakitipu. Sailboats and jetboats cavort around the harbor. There's a brick walkway full of street performers along the lakeside where tourists in hiking packs wander around with ice cream cones. At the edge of town there's a botanical garden on the peninsula with a limestone walking path that extends out to the airport. People are relaxed and smiling - even the tourist-harassed café workers and bike shop guys. It felt like a Colorado ski resort town without as many pretentious Americans. 

Gold and green mountains jut up around the city. Five minutes from downtown there's a network of pristine hiking trails so fantastic it's stupid (you can even get to the famous Routeburn track). Most of the hiking trails are mountain-bike-friendly, there's a freeride park hidden in the woods east of town, and a gondola that takes a bunch of smelly downhillers to the top of a big hill so they can show off their baggy shorts to tourists. Paragliders jump off the top of the gondola hill and float into town.

A couple hours' drive away are historic Arrowtown, Lake Wanaka, Mount Aspiring, and Fiordland National Park - home to some of New Zealand's most stunning scenery and awesome, accessible hiking.

I was smitten.

Lauren and I spent four days hanging there out to recover from the bus trip. We did a lot of eating. On the first day, we met up with our program advisor Jane - a Queenstown native - at a fantastic ice cream place on the water. We bought groceries at the supermarket and luxuriated in being able to use the hostel fridge. We sampled a more few cafés, went on a bar tour, and ate at the famous Fergburger.

Trevor and Lauren had something called the "Mr. Big Stuff" - a half pound of beef with bacon and cheese. My single-patty brie cheeseburger and its gluten free bun looked a little malnourished in comparison. 

I hadn't had a good burger in New Zealand. Their beef tends to taste a bit different, maybe because NZ cows eat cleaner grass. But I can attest that those burgers were pretty damn awesome. I also realize now that getting a diet Coke with a burger the size of my head was a pretty dumb idea. 

To offset all the eating and alcohol consumption, we walked up the hill by the gondola and watched grown men giggle to themselves on the luge track. 

I also ran around town every day. One of my favorite runs was the Queenstown Hill Time Track. 

It starts outside of town close to the hostel where we stayed. The track switches back and forth through the pines and opens up on a high point where the trees and hills cancel out the noises of the town.   A couple vagrant Merinos had been grazing in the grass when I ran up, but they'd moved on when Lauren and I hiked up later to take pictures. 

Criminy. This place is awesome. 

In retrospect we didn't take advantage of Queenstown. We didn't go Bungy jumping, skydiving, canyoning, fish-feeding, zoo visiting, jetboating, golfing, horseback riding, whitewater rafting, or kayaking (I can do those for free at home). I never got around to doing any bike riding since nobody else was keen on going with me. 

But that's okay with me. I didn't end up broke, and Lauren and I were well-rested and well-fed on the fifth day when we got up at 5:30 to start our long walk on the Kepler Track. 

I do plan to go back to Queenstown sometime, provided it's not too snowy in June. In that case, maybe I'll rent some skis. 

Part 2: not the most efficient mode of travel

At 8:04 the next morning, Lauren and I were sitting on our backpacks in front of the Nelson Youth Hostel and sweating. It was hot, I was wearing cotton, and the bus was late. Did we miss it? Surely we would've seen a huge blue bus go roaring past. We'd never get to Queenstown at this rate.

With a mechanical roar, the bus rounded the corner and ground to a stop in front of us. We shoved our bags into the boot underneath and the driver (a wry, silver-haired guy named Alan who lives on a house boat when he's not driving tourists around the country) ticked off our names on a chart. The bus was half-full of sleepy-looking people. There were two of our friends from Arcadia were there, a few Germans, some British guys and a girl, and one lady from Brazil. We flopped into a pair of seats next to some Swedish girls. I was still exhausted. A four-hour bus ride sounded nice. The bus lurched forward and we were on the road.

I shut my eyes and leaned against the window.

"So today we're on our way to Greymouth," said Alan. "If you want to book your hostels you can do it now. Lovely city, Greymouth. We'll be doing a tour at Monteith's Brewery if you'd like to sign up."

The bus got quiet. I shut my eyes again.

"Greymouth also offeres quad biking and ATV rides, if you're into that kind of thing. I'll send around a clipboard and you can tick your names off for whichever activity you'd like to do."

Silence. Naptime.

"And on the way there, we'll be going over this little hill called the Hope Saddle. Let's hope the bus makes it. After that we'll stop for some photos at the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks."

In half an hour we stopped for coffee at a café next to a farm. I got a cup of tea and watched a chicken scratch around by the bus tires. It was 8:30. I figured we'd get to Greymouth by 1:30 or 2 at the latest. We packed back onto the bus.

In a few minutes my stomach started to churn and cramp. Oh hell. I'd eaten something wrong. Was there wheat in that Chinese food I'd eaten the night before? Probably. I prayed we'd get to Graymouth fast. I tried not to think about killing myself while gluten knives were stabbing my stomach. I was on vacation in New Zealand. I should be loving it.

As we wound our way South down the coast and into the hills, we stopped more and more. We stopped for pictures at Cape Foulwind. We stopped for a walk through the bush. We stopped at the Pancake Rocks. We walked through the bush again. We looked at beaches. Between each stop, Alan would interrupt my nap with a fun fact about opossum traps or New Zealand weather. After a couple hours, I gave up on sleep and talked to the Swedish girls about skydiving.

We got to Greymouth at 4:00. I staggered off the bus and we checked into a hostel called Noah's Ark. I got the monkey room. Good lord, you've got to be kidding me.

I had to get out of there. I attempted a run around the town, which consisted of a few houses and a supermarket scattered around a train station. I limped back into the hostel half an hour later, defeated and clutching my stomach. I flopped onto my bed. A stuffed gorilla was staring at me from the mantel. It was getting really hard to keep up my love affair with New Zealand.

The brewery tour was cancelled that night, so we had a beer tasting and a nice dinner at a sports bar full of senior citizens. It wasn't a bad deal, even though I couldn't eat the bread or drink the beer.

The trip picked up steam after that night. My cramps faded each day as the gluten crawled through my system. As we headed further South, the roads got thinner and windier. The landscape turned rugged, wild, and colorful. I started loving the photo stops. I forced myself out of bed each morning to go for a run at sunrise before the bus pulled away for the day at 8:00.

We stopped in a few old mining towns along the way. Some of us tried to relax, but we had to get back on the bus after ten minutes or so.

We spent one night in Franz Josef and walked around on a sea-level glacier.

There wasn't much to do in Franz Josef. There were a couple bars, a few hiking trails, and a supermarket. It was like Ohiopyle if the Yough River were replaced with a big hunk of ice. But they did have a pretty sweet sunrise.

Then we made our way to Wanaka with ample photo stops and lots of New Zealand trivia in between. We said a final farewell to the coast line, saw some impossibly blue rivers, and got shouldered out of the way by excitable Asian tourists.

We got to Wanaka around 4:00. I went for a run on the lakeside hung out while some German hippies played the guitar on the sand.

Just like in Nelson, I wished we'd had more time to chill in Wanaka. There were lots of cute cafés and shops in town, and I heard that there was some great hiking and mountain biking just outside of town. But we were getting antsy and sick of being in transit, so we decided to truck on to Queenstown as fast as possible.

The next day's drive was astounding. Our first morning stop was at a bridge over a river.

Lauren wanted to throw herself off. I tried to take a video but failed at using the camera and got this sweet shot instead.

Jesus, what good form.

We stopped over in Arrowtown, another 1900's mining town with lots of pretty trees and cafés.

Then it was a quick shot down to Queenstown.

We said farewell to Alan, hefted our backpacks, and set off to check into a hostel for four blisfully bus-free days.

Thank goodness. The bus was nice, but being tied to a bus schedule is kind of stressful. And we had to be around a whole lot of people all the time. I'd much rather travel by car with one or two other people and a loose itinerary. 

this isn't real.

"No way. This isn't real. This is our life right now. This is too perfect."

"I know. We're so good at vacation."

Lauren and I had this exchange at least ten times a day over the past two weeks. Everything was absolutely, undeniably awesome. Even the things that weren't awesome are probably turning themselves around in my memory to become awesome.

Before I bombard the Internet with a thousand posts, here's some highlights:

Three of us slept in a hippie van in Nelson. We met some Irish guys with perpetual hangovers who had a rough time keeping it together on the windy mountain roads. And we met some awkward German friends who destroyed our English skills. We stepped on a glacier. There were bright blue kettle lakes and gold autumn leaves in the mountains. Lauren paid money to throw herself off a bridge. We consumed an obscene amount of wine, food, and chocolate in Queenstown. We ate ultimate dinners and giant burgers. Then we walked for four days on the Kepler, saw some amazing sunrises, realized you need matches to light stoves, and had wild and crazy 9:00 bedtimes. Our brains nearly exploded from the scenery at Milford Sound.

And I didn't even break my camera.

That was probably one of the best two weeks of my life. More updates later when I sort through my 900 photos.