After spending the night in uneventful Queenstown ... we went on to a small town right next to it, called Arrowtown. It was sooo pretty, it had one Main Street and looked like out of a Western movie, with little stores instead of the salons. Really pretty.
Then we went on .... driving all alone on the winding roads to Lake Wanaka. Also, really beautiful and laid back town.
There we hiked up Mt Iron in what felt like 30 degrees C. Why is the route up the mountain allways in the sun and the way back hidden in the shadow? Up that Mountain we had the most breathtaking 360 degree view over Lake Wanaka and the whole area.... amazing. The widness of the country is amazing.... there doesn' t seem to be a border at all!
April 02, 2008
Queenstown
After spending the morning in Milford Sound, we drove all the way back to Queenstown to spend the night and continue towards the west coast.
The weather is still amazing... sunshine and blue skies.... yeah! It got really chilly that night. The hostel we stayed in was really neat... we had our own little hut... sweet.
Queenstown is a typical resort town, skiing in winter and hiking in summertime. Since it is midseason here, not a lot of people are saying there, so not much happening. Queenstown is however the center of party all night and adrenaline kicks... you can choose between bungy - it actually the place where bungy was invented - helibungy, jet boating, river surfing, skydiving, sky swing, shotover bungy and what else you can possible imagine. We watched some bungy jumps, they all chose to get dipped into the water .... brrr, it was freezing. Actually we wanted to do white water rafting, but we thought it too cold, we are gonna do that up north.. And NO we didn' t chicken out!! ;-)
April 01, 2008
would you recognise a hobbit, if you met one?
Please excuse any spelling mistakes this HYPERLINK "mailto:f@" \l "$%" f@#$%^ PC is from the 90ies and so slow I don't see what I am writing.... I should have taken my macbook!!!
Oh my god, what a trip it had been.
We started of pretty smooth here in Te Anau back to Milford Sound. Trip takes about two hours on a scenic quite spectacular winding road. Well, we always stop at really breathtaking scenery and after ohhhing about it go on! That' s our thing, so let it go!! ;-) Anke drove like for the first hour and then we changed. It already began to get dark, well, actually here it' s like ppuuuffff somebody switched the light out. So, I was driving and the road was ok, when it started to rain and wind and fog. Then it rained really hard and the windshield whiper isn' t working at all ... of course!!! The roads starts picking up and got really steep. Oh, how mysterious this is... spooky, we like it! :-) Then after 15 minutes it wasn' t that funny anymore, because we still had an hour to go and it didn' t get any better. One couldn't see a thing, all fog or clouds or what that was. Of course, we were the only car on that freaking road... it got quite quiet inside our car, let me tell you! I followed the middle line, just to be safe, didn't want to run us down the shoulder or anything. To make things worse, Anke happily discovered that there wasn] t any mobile receiption anymore... so, there we are all alone on this freaktrip and no we would not even get in touch with anyone ..... luckily the one and only hostel up there had our bed bookings. It sounds not that bad, but one should have been there... it was really spooky. Then after a steep turn the road went into a tunnel... not a "normal" tunnel of course, hey we are in Kiwi-land, nothing is normal.
So this tunnel, was out of the 1950s, I guess (the road to the Sound was built in the 90ies so don' t you all wonder)... pitch black .. no we don' t need lights at all, we have our own, right? *ha ha ha* It went to a one lane road and it wouldn' t end.... it was creepy.... ! After the tunnel the road didn' t get any better, the trees started hanging in the road. Basically, we were quite freaked out, when we' d finally would arrive in this lost world of this lonely planet... it resembled a scene of Jurassic Park meets Lord of the Rings! If we'd seen a hobbit standing there on the side of the road... hitch hiking, wouldn' t have surprised us at all.... seriously.... Well, after 2 hours of highway .. well, track to hell.... we arrived at the hostel and it poured down like crazy. At 11 pm the lights were switched of at the hostel ... well, the generator was cut off, only security lights... what a cosy place it was. For real, it was really a neat place, with big sofas and a lot of backpackers.... During the night the storm picked up and got worse, so in the morning, it felt like during the middle of a hurricane... we were like, ok, now we are stranded in the middle of nowhere because we can' t go on the boat onto the Milford Sound... ! We caught the boat at 10am and it was quite stormy and still raining, but with raincoats and a good humor, it worked. Actually it was magnificant... the Fiordland is awesome, it looked really ... again, like out of a movie set, the mountain tops were hidden by the clouds and the water was bottle green. Really mysterious.... The sun came out in the end again and it changed the whole scenery... quite astonishing.... we didn' t get to see dolphins, but sea lions.... ok, we can live with that, we'll be swimming with the dolphins anyways, later on!! whoo hooo! That was it from the Milford Sound, now we are heading back to Queenstown and then off to the Franz Josef Glacier to the Westcoast of NZ....
We started of pretty smooth here in Te Anau back to Milford Sound. Trip takes about two hours on a scenic quite spectacular winding road. Well, we always stop at really breathtaking scenery and after ohhhing about it go on! That' s our thing, so let it go!! ;-) Anke drove like for the first hour and then we changed. It already began to get dark, well, actually here it' s like ppuuuffff somebody switched the light out. So, I was driving and the road was ok, when it started to rain and wind and fog. Then it rained really hard and the windshield whiper isn' t working at all ... of course!!! The roads starts picking up and got really steep. Oh, how mysterious this is... spooky, we like it! :-) Then after 15 minutes it wasn' t that funny anymore, because we still had an hour to go and it didn' t get any better. One couldn't see a thing, all fog or clouds or what that was. Of course, we were the only car on that freaking road... it got quite quiet inside our car, let me tell you! I followed the middle line, just to be safe, didn't want to run us down the shoulder or anything. To make things worse, Anke happily discovered that there wasn] t any mobile receiption anymore... so, there we are all alone on this freaktrip and no we would not even get in touch with anyone ..... luckily the one and only hostel up there had our bed bookings. It sounds not that bad, but one should have been there... it was really spooky. Then after a steep turn the road went into a tunnel... not a "normal" tunnel of course, hey we are in Kiwi-land, nothing is normal.
So this tunnel, was out of the 1950s, I guess (the road to the Sound was built in the 90ies so don' t you all wonder)... pitch black .. no we don' t need lights at all, we have our own, right? *ha ha ha* It went to a one lane road and it wouldn' t end.... it was creepy.... ! After the tunnel the road didn' t get any better, the trees started hanging in the road. Basically, we were quite freaked out, when we' d finally would arrive in this lost world of this lonely planet... it resembled a scene of Jurassic Park meets Lord of the Rings! If we'd seen a hobbit standing there on the side of the road... hitch hiking, wouldn' t have surprised us at all.... seriously.... Well, after 2 hours of highway .. well, track to hell.... we arrived at the hostel and it poured down like crazy. At 11 pm the lights were switched of at the hostel ... well, the generator was cut off, only security lights... what a cosy place it was. For real, it was really a neat place, with big sofas and a lot of backpackers.... During the night the storm picked up and got worse, so in the morning, it felt like during the middle of a hurricane... we were like, ok, now we are stranded in the middle of nowhere because we can' t go on the boat onto the Milford Sound... ! We caught the boat at 10am and it was quite stormy and still raining, but with raincoats and a good humor, it worked. Actually it was magnificant... the Fiordland is awesome, it looked really ... again, like out of a movie set, the mountain tops were hidden by the clouds and the water was bottle green. Really mysterious.... The sun came out in the end again and it changed the whole scenery... quite astonishing.... we didn' t get to see dolphins, but sea lions.... ok, we can live with that, we'll be swimming with the dolphins anyways, later on!! whoo hooo! That was it from the Milford Sound, now we are heading back to Queenstown and then off to the Franz Josef Glacier to the Westcoast of NZ....
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