Queenstown leisure

Thursday, April 11, 2019  Queenstown

A highlight of the day was our optional nature walk along a part of Lake Wakatipu, the lake Queenstown is on. The Lakeshore, Forest, and Bird Watching Tour was the first half day, followed by our free time strolling through the town. This area is truly a sportsman's paradise, known for its commerce-oriented tourism, especially hiking adventures and ski tourism.

Our guide picked six of us up from the hotel, and we drove along the north side of Lake Wakatipu up to car park. From there, we hiked through this dense forest to Bob's Bay, which is where we were in the top photo. Along the way, the guide pointed out stoat traps, fantail birds, and tui birds.

Our guide pointed out this colorful mushroom.

More of Bob's Bay, looking across the lake.

This old limestone kiln produced the mortar for the many brick buildings in the town.

In the right background is the little beach where we were in the top photo. We're standing on a tiny pier, and we startled a few rats into the water, who swam to shore.

A rat! I did my best to get a photo of one of the swimming rats. Do you see it? Right in the middle.

Pretty scenery across the bay.

There I am, in a photo stolen from Keith. I may be wrong, but the guide may be telling us about the Not Beechtree.

Looking back eastward towards Queenstown.

 We hiked up up up for some nice views. You can see Steve and Diana, and Keith and Noreen.

Pretty.

Horoeka (or lancewood) leaves, from a tree that has evolved to defend itself against being eaten by the now-extinct moa. Our guide explained this fascinating info (as did Greg the day before when we saw this tree at the Caymus Falls): Scientists speculate that as a tiny seedling, the horoeka grows small brown leaves that help the infant tree blend in with leaf litter on the forest floor.  So, a prowling moa might pass by and spare the plant.

As it grows, horoeka's leaves change, becoming long and spiky, with barbs along the edges, as seen above. Scientists believe that bright spots near the barbs are probably meant to get moas' attention and make them think twice about trying to swallow such a prickly meal. Finally, when they reach adulthood, the haroeka's leaves change once again, becoming rounder and losing their spikes.

Why?  Perhaps because the tree is now tall enough to hoist its leaves out of the reach of hungry moas.
What helped prove this theory is that they compared the leaves of this species with a species of horoeka that is genetically most similar to it, but does not live on the main islands of New Zealand. Rather, it is found ONLY on the Chatham Islands which are 800 miles to the east of New Zealand. The leaves from the Chatham Islands species show little to no difference in juvenile plants vs adult plants. Never having experienced the natural selection due to the presence of moas, the Chatham island species never “evolved” the character to produce the different juvenile leaves.

 After the nature walk, we wandered around the downtown. In 2012, Queenstown boasted 220 adventure tourism activities, including skiing and snowboarding, jet boating, whitewater rafting, bungy jumping, mountain biking, skateboarding, tramping, paragliding, sky diving, and fly fishing. 

 We had heard that Rick, Beth, and Cheryl had found a great Mexican restaurant here, so we found one too. It turned out it wasn't the same one, but we liked ours. In this photo, we're looking out the window to the shopping street below.

It was named Sombreros, of course! We were the only ones in there, until we were about finished. 

Look at that large wooden table, carved from a single log. 

 Eichardt's Private Hotel. European explorer William Gilbert Rees was one of the first non-Māori to settle the area. He established a high country farm in this very location in 1860, but the discovery of gold in the Arrow River in 1862 encouraged Rees to convert his wool shed into a hotel named the Queen's Arms, now the Eichardt's.

Speaking of William Rees, there's a statue of him down by the Main Town Pier.

We walked out onto the pier, and there's the Eichardt's Hotel and a nice little beach. A short distance away was the wharf for the TSS Earnslaw, a 1912 Edwardian vintage twin screw steamer plying the waters of the lake for tourists. It is one of the oldest tourist attractions in Central Otago, and the only remaining commercial passenger-carrying coal-fired steamship in the southern hemisphere. (TSS - "turbine steam ship")

Greg told us about Fergburger, and how it has become a wild and crazy fad for Queenstown. He said the line goes on forever, but that it was THEE thing to do and would be worth the wait. Here it is, but we passed on by. 

I'm not recalling what we did the remainder of the day, nor for dinner. Without photos or notes, I can't remember stuff seven months later!

Milford Sound day trip

Wednesday, April 10, 2019  Queenstown to Milford Sound and back

It was a rainy day on Milford Sound, and therefore 1000s of waterfalls off the cliffs. We had visited the sound a few weeks earlier on our cruise, but this was from a different view down close to the water, and on a different kind of day. The drive to Milford Sound was hours. The sound is mostly straight west from Queenstown as the bird flies, but to get there, we had to drive far to the south, a bit west, and then far to the northwest.

It rained all day, so we got to see numerous waterfalls from the cliffs just driving to the sound. Just a few miles before reaching the sound, far north from Te Anau (where the Fiordland National Park Visitor Center is located), we stopped by the side of the road to hike to The Chasm. It's a spot along the Cleddau River, where the watercourse carves its way through narrow rock formations, making interesting sculptures.

 The force of the river as it approached the Chasm, and dropped right under our bridge.

Photos can not really capture the brilliance of the  river "artwork".

 Once we arrived in Milford Sound, we had to wait a bit to get onto our boat. It was this cool blue sailing vessel, as opposed to a ferry boat. (Photo: Keith)

 There's the narrator, telling us stuff we mostly knew from our previous visit there, when the cruise-ship narrator was a retired Fiordland National Park Ranger, whose home was Te Anau.

Due to the rain, there were impressive waterfalls everywhere.

We are about to put the bow of our boat right into that waterfall!

Many adventurous souls went out to get drenched in that waterfall. Not Janet nor I. I stole this photo from Keith!

We sailed clear out to the Tasman Sea and turned around, and we got to see some sea lions out there on the rocks. (Thank you, Keith.)

 A view of the long sound, on our way back into it from the Tasman Sea.

Almost back to the Milford Sound port, we passed Bowman Falls, a large permanent waterfall on the north side of the sound.

I had no more photos from this rainy day. We had a long drive back to Queenstown. We stopped at the National Park Visitor Center in Te Anau. Back in Queenstown, we had dinner at Speight's Ale House, but despite the attraction of its name, it was not too great. Too many of us for too few wait staff, and all of us crowded into two booths.

As Greg said early on, if we were going to have a rainy day, this was the day to have it since it meant all the great waterfalls in Milford Sound, as well as on the drive there.

Moeraki Boulders, wineries, and all the way to Queenstown

Tuesday, April 9, 2019   Oamaru to Queenstown

We started the day heading south to the Moeraki Boulders. They are a group of large spherical “stones” on Koekohe Beach near Moeraki. We then began a long drive west across the country to reach Queenstown. Along the way, we stopped at a winery and a roadside fruit/vegetable market.

In the Brydone Hotel's grand staircase, headed down to breakfast. Janet and Virginia posed for me!

There were lots of tourists out that morning at the Moeraki Boulders. These boulders are actually concretions that have been exposed through shoreline erosion from coastal cliffs. Even today, there are still boulders remaining in the mudstone that will, eventually, fall on to the beach as they come loose due to erosion!

 Here is one that soon will become a "free" boulder as the hillside erodes further.

They originally started forming in ancient sea floor sediments around 60 million years ago, and the largest boulders are estimated to have taken about 4 million years to get to their current size.

 Here's one with the outer layer eroded away. After the concretions formed, large cracks known as septaria formed in them. Brown calcite, yellow calcite, and small amounts of dolomite and quartz progressively filled these cracks, and that's what you can see in my photo.

 Oh, we just took too many photos of the boulders on this bright, sunny morning.

Some cool driftwood too!

We drove a little farther south before reaching Hwy 85, which turned north-westward. We stopped for a break in Ranfurly, which is an old art-deco railroad town. This marker indicates that they've made the old rail line a rails-to-trails route, and as you can see in the background, it's very popular with cyclists.

Interestingly, this rail line is the same one we took on our excursion a few weeks earlier out of Dunedin. That day, we took the Otago Central Railroad north along the Taieri River Gorge as far as Pukerangi, which is about 1/3 of the distance to Ranfurly.The rail line continued to Cromwell, almost to Queenstown, which we would be passing through later on this day. The railway was started in 1879, and opened to Clyde (almost to Cromwell) in 1907, and the remainder of the way in 1921. It served its purpose of opening the central region to commerce and passengers for 80 years.

 One of their art deco buildings, the Milk Bar. 

Behind the train station (now a visitor center) was an old barn that served as a little museum. This old rail car looked cool.

Not sure why this photo is of any interest. lol

This old Fenton Library (1924) looked interesting, so I walked inside, and it was now the local radio station. I didn't see anyone in there; they seemed to have it on automatic pre-recorded playing of music.

 This old stone prison was transferred here from its original location in town.

We continued farther west, to the Black's Hotel in Ophir, which seemed like the middle of nowhere (it's considered Central Otago). It's a 1920s art deco hotel, and their website features their 56-bottle-strong collection of whiskeys. We had a great lunch there.

 Sure enough, the bar was jammed with whiskeys, and they were primarily single-malt scotches. The photo below is a close-up of their shelf that's way back in the hallway behind the bar, where they kept the empty scotch boxes (you can barely see it in the photo above). 

 Here's their empty-carton "paradise". When I asked Rick if he remembered this place, he sure did! He ordered a scotch they had tried when they spent a week in Scotland, because the distillery was just down the road from them. As I recall, it was the Royal Lochnagar, which has several boxes in this photo.

I loved this Scotsman painting on the bar wall.This is from their website: "Sandy, the owner, is commonly known as the Naked Scotsman after his gourmet sauces brand. His strong Scottish background is seen through the hotel's décor and 56-strong whiskey collection in the bar." As I am typing this, I feel "connected" to my story and memories, and went to get a dram of my Macallan single-malt 12-yr, dbl cask. mmmmm

 After lunch, we looked around outside, with their colorful cottages out back. I forget what Greg was telling us.

What a nice, colorful place to stay. We got to peek inside the rooms, each of which was differently furnished.

The property had this tree with the hanging tea cups.

We continued southwestward, through Clyde, and then northwestward along the Clutha River toward Cromwell. Off to the side of our bus was the Cromwell Gorge. On the side of hill up there are terraces as a landslide-preventive measure.

A close-up of the landslide protection area. We'd never seen that sort of thing before.

Once we reached Cromwell, we crossed the Kawarau River to visit the Carrick Winery. You can see the river in the background.

Otago is most famous for its Pinot Noir, but we also had two whites. As I recall, we weren't too impressed with the whites.

We had beautiful days in New Zealand!

Keep the birds out!

After departing the winery, we drove just a short ways out of Cromwell to the Jones Family Fruit Stall.

It began in 1979, when Mrs Jones opened a small fruit stall in a Skyline garage beside the state highway at the start of the Kawarau Gorge heading toward Queenstown. "40 years later, after 3 major expansions, Jones Family Fruit Stall has developed into a bustling enterprise which attracts people from around the globe." Janet and I bought some fabulous peaches.

No more photos from this day. The Kawarau Gorge was a pretty drive into Queenstown, and we passed the bridge where the AJ Hackett Bungy Company built the world's first commercial bungy- jumping site. Bob and Derek Brown jumped from there earlier this year during their bike tour.

We had a confused check-in at our hotel, since they were doing construction and our rooms were slow in being ready. I do not recall what we did for dinner or during the evening.