Queenstown & Milford Sound
After a 3 hour return trip over the Tasman we've come in for a landing in Queenstown, a lake resort city of about 16,000 on New Zealand's south island. Our condo here has a full laundry, kitchen and the living room with a gas fireplace. It's going to cool off later in our stay so we may get to use it.
Queenstown is built on a huge alpine lake that's kind of “Z” shaped and although the lower part of the southern alps is visible and it snows here in the winter, it doesn't get really cold. Most of the time winter temperatures are in the 30's and there's rarely snow cover. Between the front of our unit and the road there's a hedge of New Zealand mountain flax that's just out of flower. There are dozens of wilted flowers on each one – the display must have been fabulous just last week.
A lot of our Queenstown stay has been devoted to loafing since we're here to relax rather than tour. But we did find time to go to the movie in Wanaka. Since there are no cinema chains in the area the place we saw 'The Kid Who Would Be King' is actually a cafe/bakery in addition to showing films. The theater is comfortably large. The front seats are a sectional sofa and the kids in the audience who didn't fit on the sofa dragged over bean bag chairs so they could all sit together and guzzle their drinks and popcorn. We were a couple of rows back in regulation theater chairs. There were a lot of local ads before the movie including a cute one for recycling but only a single trailer for the upcoming Disney movie 'The Lion King.' In the middle of our show the screen went black (intermission!) and the audience trouped back out to the bakery for more snacks to sustain us until the end of the show. Tom had an enormous slice of carrot cake topped with pepitos and dried apricot bits. Tom judged it excellent. Then it was back to the film which we both enjoyed. The film I really want to see, however, is the Australian movie 'Storm Boy.' It's based on a book about a young boy who raises three pelican chicks.
After the movie we called the owner of a Wanaka garden that's on the Yellow Book tour. The garden is about 15 years old, established in a field by a former sheep rancher and his wife, Donella, at 29 Lichen Lane (the perfect address for a garden). They've fenced their lot and lined it with native shrubs for privacy. There's open lawn away from the house for the grandkids to “destroy” as the gardener put it and a huge vegetable and berry garden so they can grow most of their own produce. There are also fruit trees – everything from pears, apples and plums to citrus. They also have a greenhouse where they can grow tomatoes and stuff through the winter. I mustn't forget her hedge of bay laurel, creeping rosemary, huge blue hydrangea and glorious 'Grosso' lavender everywhere. Donella has grown it all from a single cutting. Tom took a photo of the lavender with me in the frame just to show how enormous it is.
As in many New Zealand gardens most of the beds are lined with box. It looks like a lot of work to clip it and Donella showed us sunburn damage on some of the plants because she's gotten a late start on the shearing. She also showed us some leaf damage from a late frost this spring. But despite the high elevation, winter here isn't as severe as at home - they rarely have any snow accumulation and the citrus trees bear fruit although it ripens late, near Christmas.
Surprisingly we toured for a second straight day, heading out for Milford Sound early this morning. Tom drove about half way there and then we caught a tour bus for the rest of the trip. The roads in the mountains are neither wide nor straight so driving down the steep mountains can be a challenge. We had great weather though so we enjoyed the trip to the water. The mountains at the water's edge are over a mile high and in most places the sheer rock plunges straight into the sea without any gravel or rocks to make a shore. Almost all of the local waterfalls were running, sending cascades of water down the rock face – many start more than 500 feet above the water. The area gets more than 30 feet of rain a year so rain forest is anywhere it can get a foothold on the mountain rocks. Because the fjord is so narrow, convection currents in the air make the sound very windy on sunny days like this one. There was a 35 mph wind today and in a storm last week the wind was gusting at over 100 mph. High wind everywhere in New Zealand is one of the reasons that most of the native plants have tiny leaves – some are less than 1/8” long.
It was the wrong time of year to see whales in the sound but we did see a group of young male fur seals sleeping on a huge rock next to the sea. They gather in the sound and feed on rock lobsters and local fish until they're hardy enough to challenge bulls in established colonies.
Our tour boat took us out into the open sea to show how well hidden the opening to Milford Sound is. When we started back to shore we were overtaken by a cruise ship that was going into Milford. It was smaller than the 'Explorer of the Seas' that blocked our view of the Sydney opera house but it was still a substantial vessel. It was dwarfed, however, by the massive mountains surrounding the sound.
I'm glad we finally got to Milford but the truth is that there are too many tourists in the area. Buses line the roads into Milford, which is a settlement of 200 people devoted to the tourist trade. Once on the water there are boats full of tourists everywhere and it's hard to hear the ship's information presentation about the sound and its wildlife over the drone of helicopters and small planes. This is one place I wish I'd visited 40 odd years ago when I first came NZ. There's a worry here about the numbers of tourists coming here and Milford Sound today shows the worries are justified.
Queenstown is built on a huge alpine lake that's kind of “Z” shaped and although the lower part of the southern alps is visible and it snows here in the winter, it doesn't get really cold. Most of the time winter temperatures are in the 30's and there's rarely snow cover. Between the front of our unit and the road there's a hedge of New Zealand mountain flax that's just out of flower. There are dozens of wilted flowers on each one – the display must have been fabulous just last week.
A lot of our Queenstown stay has been devoted to loafing since we're here to relax rather than tour. But we did find time to go to the movie in Wanaka. Since there are no cinema chains in the area the place we saw 'The Kid Who Would Be King' is actually a cafe/bakery in addition to showing films. The theater is comfortably large. The front seats are a sectional sofa and the kids in the audience who didn't fit on the sofa dragged over bean bag chairs so they could all sit together and guzzle their drinks and popcorn. We were a couple of rows back in regulation theater chairs. There were a lot of local ads before the movie including a cute one for recycling but only a single trailer for the upcoming Disney movie 'The Lion King.' In the middle of our show the screen went black (intermission!) and the audience trouped back out to the bakery for more snacks to sustain us until the end of the show. Tom had an enormous slice of carrot cake topped with pepitos and dried apricot bits. Tom judged it excellent. Then it was back to the film which we both enjoyed. The film I really want to see, however, is the Australian movie 'Storm Boy.' It's based on a book about a young boy who raises three pelican chicks.
After the movie we called the owner of a Wanaka garden that's on the Yellow Book tour. The garden is about 15 years old, established in a field by a former sheep rancher and his wife, Donella, at 29 Lichen Lane (the perfect address for a garden). They've fenced their lot and lined it with native shrubs for privacy. There's open lawn away from the house for the grandkids to “destroy” as the gardener put it and a huge vegetable and berry garden so they can grow most of their own produce. There are also fruit trees – everything from pears, apples and plums to citrus. They also have a greenhouse where they can grow tomatoes and stuff through the winter. I mustn't forget her hedge of bay laurel, creeping rosemary, huge blue hydrangea and glorious 'Grosso' lavender everywhere. Donella has grown it all from a single cutting. Tom took a photo of the lavender with me in the frame just to show how enormous it is.
As in many New Zealand gardens most of the beds are lined with box. It looks like a lot of work to clip it and Donella showed us sunburn damage on some of the plants because she's gotten a late start on the shearing. She also showed us some leaf damage from a late frost this spring. But despite the high elevation, winter here isn't as severe as at home - they rarely have any snow accumulation and the citrus trees bear fruit although it ripens late, near Christmas.
Surprisingly we toured for a second straight day, heading out for Milford Sound early this morning. Tom drove about half way there and then we caught a tour bus for the rest of the trip. The roads in the mountains are neither wide nor straight so driving down the steep mountains can be a challenge. We had great weather though so we enjoyed the trip to the water. The mountains at the water's edge are over a mile high and in most places the sheer rock plunges straight into the sea without any gravel or rocks to make a shore. Almost all of the local waterfalls were running, sending cascades of water down the rock face – many start more than 500 feet above the water. The area gets more than 30 feet of rain a year so rain forest is anywhere it can get a foothold on the mountain rocks. Because the fjord is so narrow, convection currents in the air make the sound very windy on sunny days like this one. There was a 35 mph wind today and in a storm last week the wind was gusting at over 100 mph. High wind everywhere in New Zealand is one of the reasons that most of the native plants have tiny leaves – some are less than 1/8” long.
It was the wrong time of year to see whales in the sound but we did see a group of young male fur seals sleeping on a huge rock next to the sea. They gather in the sound and feed on rock lobsters and local fish until they're hardy enough to challenge bulls in established colonies.
Our tour boat took us out into the open sea to show how well hidden the opening to Milford Sound is. When we started back to shore we were overtaken by a cruise ship that was going into Milford. It was smaller than the 'Explorer of the Seas' that blocked our view of the Sydney opera house but it was still a substantial vessel. It was dwarfed, however, by the massive mountains surrounding the sound.
I'm glad we finally got to Milford but the truth is that there are too many tourists in the area. Buses line the roads into Milford, which is a settlement of 200 people devoted to the tourist trade. Once on the water there are boats full of tourists everywhere and it's hard to hear the ship's information presentation about the sound and its wildlife over the drone of helicopters and small planes. This is one place I wish I'd visited 40 odd years ago when I first came NZ. There's a worry here about the numbers of tourists coming here and Milford Sound today shows the worries are justified.
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