Queenstown

Straight from the mountain that fell on our heads, we headed on to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand, if not the world. But rather than throwing ourselves off bungy bridges we were really here to catch up with my family, Winks my Aunt (freshly returned from attending the wedding) and cousins Sam and Emma whom I haven’t seen for probably nearly ten years.

Queenstown itself is a busy little town full of bars, sports shops and tour operators set in a magnificent setting on the shore of Lake Wakatipu, surrounded by beautiful jagged mountains. It reminded us very much of Vancouver although we were told the climate is a lot drier!

Unfortunately, the timing of our arrival was not good as Sam along with husband Jeremaia and their two highly energetic beautiful little girls (Gwinnie and Ali) were in the middle of moving house so we played our small part in bringing over their dog basket before enjoying a curry take-out and some beers to celebrate the move. It was a real joy to see them all again although sadly we missed Emma’s new wife Amelia by a day as she had to head back to Dunedin.

The next day we headed into Queenstown and did the short 40min hike to the peak of Queenstown where they have a hilarious family-orientated concrete luge track with plastic carts served by a small chair lift. Suffice to say Jo and I signed up and spent a good half hour banging wheels and bumpers as we raced each other side by side down the short twisty track- Jo even showed that despite our recent nuptials her competitive spirit was not dampened and she duly put me into the wall on one corner!

Now, being in the mountains I was keen to get some mountain biking in so we rented some dual suspension XC bikes and headed out on the Moonlight track in the blistering heat – to do a 25km loop through some incredible scenery, following streams and goat tracks, at times even carrying our bikes over boggy wetland sections before eventually leading up to a mountain pass with epic views and some hairy looking drop-offs into the gorge below. What started out as easy double-track ended up being not quite the riding trail I was hoping for as the so-called single track was virtually unrideable and turned into hike-a-bike in places and clearly hadn’t been built or maintained for biking. This dampened our spirits a little but overall being out in the New Zealand backcountry and with the stunning vistas it was worth getting out of town for and putting in the effort. We will be back to get some proper biking in!

Of course, we still had the rugby going on and we piled round to Sam and Jeremaia’s
for the NZ v Austrailia 1/4 final match. I should mention at this point that Jeremaia is a typical kiwi bloke – he loves sheep, shandy and rugby but not as much as he loves sledging the English and we had some good banter going although given the shocking performance of our team there was only so much I was prepared to stand up for them. The mood turned immediately serious once the game kicked off and we settled in to watch what was probably one of the matches of the tournament, the tension was palpable not just in the house, but across the whole nation as this was what was likely to be the last big test for the All Blacks before supposedly cruising to an easy win against the French in the final (how wrong that turned out to be!) It was an epic match, but the ABs won it convincingly and dominated the loose and defended with a desperate but assured vigour to play themselves into the final and a shot at their first world cup for 24 years. Jeremiah was emotional but then he is a sensitive soul.

I have to say a big thanks to Winks for putting us up and feeding us some delicious home cooked meals for 4 days and also being so welcoming when after dropping us at the airport we called her 2 hours later to ask if we could stay another night after all flights were cancelled due to the high winds that day. She apologized on the way home as she’d already put our bedsheets through the wash and would we mind fresh ones! That’s efficiency that would put some Swedes I know to shame…..

Post Script:
Now for a little shameless plug – Jeremaia runs South Island Guides and as such plays around in the mountains quite a bit as a mountain guide pretending to work while putting together bespoke luxury holidays for the likes of Larry Page (founder of Oracle and one of the richest men in the world) and Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame. Most of these involve helicoptors, very remote mountain lodges, glacier treks, kite-surfing in deserted fjords, back country ski-touring, heli-skiing etc. If you can even dream of an adventure in the mountains Jeremiah can make it happen for you (for the right price!) so if you ever find yourself in New Zealand and want an unforgettable mountain experience check out :
http://www.southislandguides.com and his partner company http://www.exclusivelynz.com.