Some Other Things That Are Not in Your Lonely Planet NZ Guide

January 1, 2007

We flew back to Rotorua on the 30th and landed in the early afternoon. The rest of the day was usurped by a run around Blue Lake (it was a gorgeous day!) and a fantastic dinner that Johnny made for us of beer-battered hapuka fish (seriously, these were the best fish and chips ever!).

On New Year's Eve, Emily had to work, but John, Will and I filled the day with three activities, the first one a more touristy option that is in the Lonely Planet NZ guide, but the other two that definitely are not.

We started the morning with a visit to the Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland, 20 minutes south of Rotorua and featuring the tons of different thermal pools, bubbling mud pools, craters, mineral terraces, and the famous Lady Knox geyser. The area around Rotorua is known for it's sulpuric smell and the bountiful thermal activity, so this was our chance to check some of it out.



The first sight was the Lady Knox geyser that erupts daily at 10:15 am and continues for about an hour.


After the geyser, we checked out the rest of the park, where they have a lovely walking path with a natural hike that takes you around all the various sights.














From Wai-o-tapu, we drove over to Waikite Valley Golf Club to do some "sheep golfing". This is a nine-hole course that also serves as a sheep pasture. The entire golf course is grazed by sheep, with the exception of the greens, which are surrounded by electric fences to prevent the sheep from grazing on these groomed areas.





Golf was hilarious, the sheep were mainly on the first four holes, and seemed to be where we always wanted to go.

From sheep golf, we headed back to Rotorua in order to "have a go" at lawn bowling at the Rotorua East Bowling Club, just around the corner from John and Emily's house. Two of John's friends, Stu and Mandy, also met up with us. The president of the club was this nice little lady named Elizabeth who gave us some instruction on how to properly bowl. Turns out I have some pretty small hands and only require a size 1 set of lawn bowl balls.








In the end, after 8 ends of lawn bowling, there was a three-way tie for first with 2 points each between John, Will and Mandy. I only got one point and Stu didn't get any. It was hilarious and fun, now I want to find a club to bowl with in the bay area!

Later in the evening, we all headed up to Stu and Gen's place at Lake Okareka for bbq potluck for NYE celebrations with a good crew of their friends. We had quite the spread and it was great to get to know all these folks better.

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2008!

Curling in Naseby?...Check!...What???

December 29, 2007

The next morning, we woke up and headed out of the Queenstown area for more adventures elsewhere. We had come up with a plan that involved more wine tasting (yay!), a fantastic lunch at a winery, curling in a little town called Nasbey (definitely not listed in the Lonely Planet guide for New Zealand!), and meeting up for dinner with Brokaw and Drea (who just moved to Dunedin in early November and are blogging about their new life in NZ...go blogger!).

On the way back to Bannockburn, we stopped in at Peregrine Winery in Gibbston Valley to check out the architecture of their tasting room and grounds, which were very interesting and schmancy. They have a great space for holding outdoor concerts and their next show is Jose Gonzalez, sweet! Too bad we won't be around.We didn't taste any wines, being too early, even for me, but apparently they have some pretty amazing wines, and they are distributed a bit more widely than some of the other vineyards we had been visiting (e.g. they are actually sold in the US).

Our first stop in Bannockburn was the Olssens Winery, who also apparently make award winning and famous pinot noirs. If you haven't noticed, Central Otago is renowed for their pinot noirs, and thankfully, that fits in well with what I like to drink. We were in for a bit of a treat because they had some wines open for tasting that they usually don't have for public tasting, and of course, there were some gems in the bunch.


From Olssens, we headed to Carrick Winery for lunch. We had a fantastic table on their outdoor patio overlooking Lake Dunstan and the lunch was pretty awesome.



No rest for the wicked, right after lunch, we had to get on the road as we had a reservation to go curling in Naseby. You may be confused, but we are talking ice curling that is common in Canada. Emily had found a brochure that advertised this little town and their state-of-the-art facility for curling, the Maniototo Curling Rink. Naseby is also the home to members of the Olympic curling team from New Zealand. We were very excited.
Out of the four of us, John and I were the only ones who had curled before, both of us in high school. We befriended the rink manager, a jovial guy named Fred, who agreed to let us "slide", which they usually don't let beginners do. We played in two teams of two, John and Emily versus Will and I.


It was a tight game, with great plays, a lot of impressive "hurry-hard!" sweeping, and sliding galore. We were in our element. In the end, Will and I edged out John and Emily with a 6-5 win (after two hours, we only managed to complete 5 ends!).

From Naseby, we were back on the road and rushing to the east coast of the South Island to meet up with Drea and Brokaw for dinner (we were late, of course). They drove up the coast from Dunedin to meet us in a little town called Waianakarua for dinner at The Mill House. This also worked out well because we didn't have a place to stay and the Mill House is also a motel. Sweet!
After dinner, Drea and Brokaw convinced us to go check out some yellow-eyed penguins who are spotted close to dusk at the nearby reserve at Katiki Point, a sanctuary for this species that is endangered.


We got to the reserve pretty late and hiked down to the reserve viewing area when the sun had already set. We managed to get views of one little yellow-eyed penguin before a very angry public servant found us and gave us quite the lecture about being there after closing. Unbeknownst to us, the reserve had been closed for 20 minutes and we had an earful. It was an exciting end to a pretty fun day, and we quickly bid goodbye to Brokaw and Drea before heading back to The Mill House for zzz's.

Milford Sound?...Check!

December 28, 2007

One of the big "things-to-do" on our list was checking out Milford Sound, recommended by everyone and every guide for NZ on earth.

To get to Milford Sound, there's a pretty arduous 4 hour drive from Queenstown before you hop on the 2-hour cruise, which makes for a long day. Will and I decided to try the fly-cruise-fly option, which involves a 35-minute flight in a 6-seater propeller plane, the 2 hour cruise, and another flight back to Queenstown. It was a bit of splurge, but the thought of 8-9 hours in a car was not appetizing to us or John (our driver).

Thankfully, it was a gorgeously perfect day, clear skies and bright sun (a drastic change from the day before which was completely overcast and raining hard for most of the day in Queenstown).

John dropped us off for our 10 AM flight and we were off:

We were on the plane with another couple from the UK and a guy from Australia. Our pilot was quite nice and gave us commentary on the way to Milford Sound as we flew over the gold rush areas, Shotover River, had sights of the Coronet Peak ski area and the town of Glenorchy (where they apparently filmed some of "Lord of The Rings", a common theme in NZ...).

Scenes from the flight to Milford Sound:








We got off the flight, were whisked onto a bus shuttle, and taken to the dock, where we boarded one of Red Cruises boats.













After the cruise, we were once again shuttled back to the airport and collected into another little plane, this time with a different pilot. This new pilot was more adventurous than the previous, with sharp banking turns and up-close views of glaciers on the ride back. We also took a different route back to Queenstown, with sights of the mountains in Fiordland National Park.









A couple views of Queenstown on our approach:





Will and I had such a fantastic time on the flight-cruise-flight to Milford Sound, and I would recommend it to anyone, particularly if you have nice weather. Following this experience, Will and I searched Wikipedia for a while to determine the differences between a "sound", a "fjord or fiord", a "bay", and "estuary", and so on and so on. It's still not that clear to us.

We caught a ride back to Queenstown city center and went for lunch on the patio of the Speight's Ale House, where I enjoyed a pretty fantastic salad with grilled lamb.
After lunch, we wandered around Queenstown and checked out the waterfront (a little anti-climactic after seeing it from the plane) and found the Queenstown Gardens, a public park where there's an official disc golf course in the middle of this very, very busy public park.






Late afternoon, we met up with John and Emily, and then went for dinner with some of their friends living in Queenstown at a great asian-ish restaurant called Chop Chop. After dinner, we went for drinks, specifically the ginger beer (which they brew and has alcohol) at Dux de Lux Bar, which was damn yummy.

An interesting side not is how long it stays light out in Queenstown during the summer compared to even the north island. It is a bit surreal when you're that far down south and you feel like you're on the edge of the earth...

A solid day and night in Queenstown. Blogtastic.