Queenstown, February 16, 2023

 

Queenstown is on the elbow of Lake Wakatipu at 1,020 feet. The lake is 47 miles long, 3 miles wide and 1.250 feet deep (230 feet below sea level). The town is extremely tight and busy and very congested. It’s the quintessential tourist town, with two small ski areas, like the size of Brighton or Solitude Utah, each within a 30 minute drive of town. In our driving and wandering around town I saw more ski shops in Queenstown than in Park City, Jackson, and Ketchum combined.   

Queenstown, Coronent Peak, February 15, 2023

Coronet Peak Ski Area

About a 30 minute drive from downtown Queenstown. 

Top elevation - 5,412 feet

Base elevation - 3,830 feet

City of Queenstown elevation -  1,020 feet

Wanaka and Te Anau, New Zealand, February 12 - 14, 2023

 

Lake Te Anau and Mt Lyall

Wanaka, New Zealand, February 13, 2023

Wanaka, another beautiful mountain town that has everything: skiing, hiking, climbing, endless spaces without hordes of people, and a relaxed vibe. The plan for the day was to hike the Rob Roy track (drive 20 miles on slow dirt road then hike 10 miles, then re-drive the slow dirt road), then drive to Te Anau (drive 140 miles on tight, curvy roads, on the wrong side, without contact lens due to pink eye),  but the schedule was too aggressive given the long distances we had to hike and then drive, combined with my weakened state (bronchitis, pink eye), so we bailed on Rob Roy and drove to Te Anau, a good decision, it still took most of the day to drive that 140 miles and it would’ve been in the dark if we’d hiked Rob Roy. 

 

Time and space is much slower in NZ, a huge improvement over the USA. A big reason is the narrow curvy one-lane roads in NZ. The multi-lane interstate highways in the US might be fast and direct, but oh how it makes idiots out of normally caring, happy people. When you know you can’t drive faster than 55mph, it seems to calm a salvage beast so common in American/Utah drivers. When one can drive 90+mph, the mind rarely if ever follows, and one quickly becomes a complete ASS.  Utahns lower themselves to an insect state when behind the wheel, especially on the interstate. Proof? Go drive I-15 from Brigham City to Provo and set the cruise on exactly the posted speed limit. You’ll be the pariah to all those cars ripping past you, and carnal hand gestures from soccer moms and Mormon Bishops will fly your way. When that happens, be the good, go high when the rest of the world goes low. Plus, you’ll still get to your destination, and just a few minutes later than Alphas

Lake Wanaka, a beautiful lake with a beautiful town, with a mountain vibe and an outdoor mindset. The lake sits in a glacier-carved basin, it's 26 miles long, 6 miles wide and sits at 912 feet and is 980 feet deep, so the bottom is lower than sea level like many of the massive lakes in New Zealand. The town of Wanaka is the gateway to Mt. Aspiring National Park, another near-miss on our travels through New Zealand. With only two and half weeks, its tough to even scratch the surface of the endless geography of New Zealand. 

 

Cows, on the drive from Wanaka to Te Anau. Did I say the pace is much slower in New Zealand? Driving those slow roads, there are no qualms to stop spontaneously and “moooo" at the cows and stretch the legs. It took most of the day to drive from Wanaka to Te Anau, shocking when considering it was only 140 miles, but those slow miles were wonderful. New country and scenery at every turn. It vaguely resembles Nevada with it’s dry, burnt grassy landscapes, but the farms in New Zealand are brilliant green, so NO, it looks nothing like Nevada. And, New Zealand has massive, Tahoe-sized lakes everywhere, with massive, glacier capped mountains at the head of those lakes. On second thought, New Zealand looks nothing like Nevada, very poor comparison!  

Te Anau, New Zealand, February 14, 2023

Our lodging in Te Anau, a two bedroom apartment with a full kitchen, and, most importantly, a laundry room. Four days into our trip and it was time for clean unders. 

 

Te Anau and its lake, Lake Te Anau, another massive mountain lake in New Zealand. It’s the second largest lake in New Zealand (Lake Taupo is the largest, and where we stayed February 20-23).  Te Anau stats: 40 miles long, average depth 554 feet, max depth 1,394 feet, and the surface sits at 663 feet in elevation, so, like other New Zealand lakes, bottoms out far below sea level. Most of the lake sits in Fiordland National Park and the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage Site.  The geography is spectacular, but the town was not my favorite. Perhaps it was my ongoing bronchitis, but the townies seemed a bit edgy and insular given the tourist make-up of its economy. We went to dinner at  a bar, at 8:01 pm, and  requested a table for dinner, but the host, a large, doughy Trump look-a-like, said, “can’t you read?? WE’RE closed to dinner service!!” The place was packed with people eating pizza and burgers and drinking beer, so I was puzzled, but then a local who recognized my stupor,  pointed out a sign taped flat to the bar 20 feet down-wind, “Food Service Closes at 8:00PM.” OK, we’ll go elsewhere, which happened to be a Subway Sandwich shop, the only place still open. Yeah a nasty Subway in a spectacular setting was disappointing, but at least they were friendly.

 

We only spent one night in Te Anau. We had planned to drive to Milford Sound, which is the iconic Fiord of New Zealand with the spiky Mitre Peak erupting 5,522 feet straight out of the Tasman Sea, but the 75 miles drive was said to take three hours - one-way - on extremely tight and turny, heavily trafficked highway with some sections of one-way mountain roads. The land-lady at our lodgings encouraged us to NOT go, "there is nothing there except a place to take a photo, and you Americans need to chill out on driving like hell to stop for 30 seconds for a photo!” She really said that, which I agreed with whole-heartedly. I’m not into bucket lists or scenery tick lists, I’d rather find a trail and take a long hike, so we didn’t drive for six hours to take one photo. Further, if we did go, we couldn’t hire a cruise of the Fiord (big tourist activity at MILF Sound, other than photos) due to Kara’s inner-ear issues which makes her highly prone to motions sickness, which she likely would’ve been already from the drive, that combined with my continuing bronchitis and need for sleep, so we bailed and instead drove to Queenstown, a mere 75 miles but 3 hours drive away. Wow, do I sound old? Too sick to go? Maybe, but that was our situation and we were already overflowing with a sense of wonder from the beauty of New Zealand. To be honest, it couldn't get much better.