Tag: New Zealand

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Queenstown, New Zealand

As I mentioned in the last post, Yanmei wasn’t too happy to be in Queenstown, too touristy. Sometimes you just have the embrace the touristy stuff and enjoy it. This morning we rode the gondola (5 minutes walk from our RV slum) up for a scenic overlook.

After we came down and had lunch we went on a parasailing ride in the lake.

That isn’t us in the picture. We went up tandem, but I was too worried about dropping my phone to take it out for pictures. The boat company gave us some pictures they took, but they are on a usb drive and I don’t currently have a way to transfer them to my iPad to post, so look for a future update or follow up with a couple of those pics. Anyway it was a great experience, very quiet and peaceful as you gently float along and a great view.

After that I upped the ante and went paragliding. Yanmei decided to pass. This was the best so far. This is where you wait for a good gust of wind to puff up the sail and run down a steep hill and launch yourself. I have some videos that I will upload later, the spotty RV Park WiFi isn’t up to it.

Pictures don’t do it justice, to be honest. Really spectacular!

We had dinner, then went for a walk in the free Queenstown garden, which in the peninsula at the bottom of the first picture in this post. It was really lovely because it was near sunset and there was a nice cool breeze coming in off the lake.

Great day. Yanmei now wishes we could stay in Queenstown for another week.

David

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RVing in South Island

Our RV trip got off to a rough start because I had a cold. It started on North Island, but has been getting progressively worse. After we got the RV and some supplies and drove for about an hour, I had a severe sinus headache, so we found a free campsite only 6 km away and decided to stay there.

It actually turned out to be a good idea and it was a very pleasant site. There were 3 other campers there when we arrived and probably a half dozen more arrived after us. You could just park anywhere, and the site was next to a nice little lake (Lake Opuha).

The next day we continued the the original day 1 target, Mount Cook. There is a hike called the Hooker Valley Track that is suppose to be one of the most beautiful in the world. It is the place I most wanted to go in New Zealand. Unfortunately when we got there it was foggy and raining heavily. If I want to hike in the cold rain, and see nothing but fog I can do that in San Francisco. We backtracked 20km to a paid campsite. Here we could hook up power, and they had showers and a community kitchen and BBQ area. They technically had “WiFi” but it was limited to 30 minutes and painfully slow.

The next morning the weather seemed better so we took another shot at Mt Cook, but alas by the time we got there it was raining steadily again, although not foggy like before. I have a light jacket, but I don’t have full rain gear. There were a fair number of people in wet weather gear heading off down the track. Even though my cold was mostly gone I decided not to go. So this is the first time in all our travels so far that weather has really foiled our plans.

We headed south to Lake Wanaka. For some reason our GPS turned us down this very rural track. I guess it was a “shortcut”, but 15km of dirt roads with some obstacles wasn’t very short.

Eventually we got back on the highway and made it to Lake Wanaka.

After resting for an hour or so there we continued to the camp I’d booked in Queenstown. Queenstown is a tourist town on scenic Lake Wakatipu. They had a lot of adventure activities like bungee jumping, skydiving, zip lining, etc. I booked the camp closest to town so we could walk to the shops and restaurants, since it is really annoying to try to park an RV in a town. Unfortunately that turned out to be not a great idea.

It was basically like living in a crowded parking lot. Yanmei kept asking why we had an RV if were we just going to live in a city. She has a good point. So far our best stop was the lovely free park in the middle of nowhere the first day. Time to take a lesson from that as we plan the rest of our trip.

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Wellington to Christchurch

Big travel day today. We took the 9am ferry from Wellington to Picton on South Island. It was a little over 3 hours, but it was like a mini cruise, they had movie theaters, a magic show, food etc. From Picton it was about a 5 hour drive down the coast to Christchurch. There is a lot of construction that delayed us quite a bit. I guess it is repairs from the big earthquake from a couple years ago that severely damaged the highway.

The drive was quite beautiful. At first we felt like we were in California because the hills were dry brown, and the valleys were filled with vineyards. They even have the “fire risk: very high” signs like California. I guess the similar climates are why they can both produce good wines.

It is very warm here, and I heard on the radio that they are setting heat records in the southern part of the island. Down here the further south you go the cooler it should get, theoretically. Right now it is getting hotter as we move south.

This is our trip so far, in New Zealand.

Tomorrow we pick up the RV. I’m not sure how much WiFi access we’ll have while RVing, so updates might be more sporadic.

David