ST. TRAVELS

Two more glorious days in Queenstown!  Bright sunshine, but rather cool weather for summer.  Splendid.  Awe-inspiring. 

In the morning of day two, we drove 20 minutes to the gold-mining town of Arrowtown and really enjoyed a walk by the river.  Here’s our version of two paths that divert in the woods.  Can you see Sue on the path less traveled? 

In the 1860’s, gold was discovered here and gold fever hit big time (just like it did earlier in the foothills of the California Sierra mountains in 1849). We were surprised to learn that one river here produced more gold than any other single gold-nugget-river in the world.  Arrowtown was charming, small, and friendly. It was a bit bigger than our California foothills gold town of Columbia, with the same feel, and with more English and Irish pubs.  In fact, we had lunch in an Irish pub here, and Sue’s lamb pie over mashed potatoes was super good.  

In the afternoon, we went on a Segway tour of Queenstown.  This two-hour tour took us around the lakefront of Queenstown, through the park, where we stopped and played one hole of frisbee golf, back through the downtown, and to the lake front.  We learned that New Zealanders are called the Kiwis not directly because of the Kiwi bird, but because of the Kiwi Shoe Polish.  In WWI, New Zealand recruits were said to have “kiwi’d-up” because they had polished boots!  Ted created a video of the last bit of our Segway tour and the YouTube url is below for you to enjoy. Here’s the Segway video (50 sec)—   

We ended the day watching the last rays of the sunshine climb up the Remarkables range of mountains across the lake from us.  Seeing the shadows climb from the lake to the tip of the mountains is a thing of beauty. 

Day three was our big trip to cruise in the Milford Sound.  It had to start early as it required a 295 kilometer bus ride to get there!  We chose ‘The BBQ Bus’ as our vendor because it’s a smaller bus, it stops about 7 times to see unique land features within the Fjordlands National Park, and it provides a real BBQ in the middle of the wilderness along the way!  The Fjordlands is a gem unto itself.  Steep mountain ridges in every direction sprinkled with beautiful valleys. 

The Milford Sound is really a fjord, and it is beyond spectacular!  The two-hour boat ride took us out all the way into the Tasman Sea and back again. The pilot found a rare yellow eyed penguin in a cove and took us within 20 feet to get a very long look.  

Waterfalls are plentiful when it is raining, and our guide says the sound is actually better when it is pouring as there are waterfalls everywhere.   

During clear bright days,  there are four in Milford Sound that flow year round, and they are pretty.  It backed into the largest waterfall and spray covering the boat and made rainbows.  

Here is a YouTube video we created while on the cruise that gives you a better perspective of this fjord (3 minutes): 

This place is a bit like being in Yosemite valley but covered in water.  Being a rainforest type of place, the four main waterfalls don’t go dry.  We loved being here.  It’s majestical (to quote a New Zealand movie we watched during our long trip home on the BBQ Bus). 

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