South Island - Part 3 (Wanaka, Queenstown and Milford)

My last post was written sitting in Wanaka, a lakeside town inland from the West Coast that I travelled down last week. The drive from Franz Josef to Wanaka had been impressive, through a landscape so rugged that the road was only opened across it in 1965.

I spent a pleasant afternoon and night in Wanaka, talking a walk along the edge of the lake and tasting some wines at the Rippon Vineyard. The next morning I made an early start to get on the road towards Queenstown, unfortunately I chose the less breathtaking of the two routes, so by South Island standards the scenery was nothing noteworthy.

In Queenstown I was due to meet up with Em, who I know well from DfE in England and who has just started a similar year at the Ministry to the one I did. She was lucky to make it down for the weekend as the North Island, including Wellington was hit by a ‘weather bomb’. This was a new Kiwi-ism for both of us, but it involved storms that grounded nearly all flights and delayed her plane.

If New Zealand is a country of adrenaline packed activities, Queenstown is undoubtedly the capital. Every corner you turn offers a jet-this, bungee-that or para-the other. We wasted no time after we arrived as our hostel had a flyer advertising some low cost helicopter flights. Our luck was definitely in as after initially looking like it was fully booked, we eventually got seats, then got upgraded to a better flight. For around £70, we were whisked up into the mountains surrounding the town, where we landed above the snowline to take some photos. It’s an incredible way to travel, especially in such a scenic area.

From the helicopter ride we went straight in search of our next thrill, which was a jet-boat ride down a narrow canyon. The boats run off two powerful engines and speed along with just a couple of inches of them in the water. The ride takes you right up close to the walls of the canyon and involves brilliant 360 turns that left us covered in spray.

We got back into town too late in the afternoon to head out and visit a winery, which was our original plan. Luckily Queenstown has this covered with a shop-cum-bar where you sit in leather armchairs sampling over 80 different wines. I even discovered (and then tried) New Zealand single malt. We then met up with a friend of Em’s from England who was travelling with his mate and the four of us sampled Queenstown nightlife. We finished the night by getting a Fergburger, a local institution that gets recommended by anyone who has travelled to Queenstown and that lived up to the reputation.

Unfortunately the next morning called for an early start. Fortunately we were off to Milford Sound and we had decided on having someone drive us there rather than driving ourselves. Usually a coach journey of 5 hours each way would fill me with dread. The scenery of the journey is so amazing that it didn’t end up being tortuous, particularly with the interesting commentary from the guide and frequent photo stops. In the end, the journey is just a warm-up for the cruise on Milford Sound (which is really a fjord carved by glaciers). Steep walls of rock rise out of the water and climb high above the boat on either side. The scale is so huge it’s hard to judge, with 150 metre waterfalls looking small until you sail up so close that the spray hits you. We even got to see a pod of dolphins that appeared right beside the boat. The photos below give some sense of how beautiful it all was.

Mountain pass over to Wanaka

Rippon vineyard

Grapes at Rippon

 Queenstown

View from the helicopter

Jumping out into snow

On a mountain (in shorts)

Coming back into Queenstown

Shotover canyon - site of the jetboat ride

The jetboat

Paraglider floating above Queenstown

The Remarkables Mountain Range

Milford

Getting up close to the waterfall

I’ll leave things there for now. I’m currently in Kaikoura, having driven most of the way back up the East of the South Island. Tomorrow I take the ferry back over to the North Island. Here are the last few sections of my drive.

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