Wild Thymes in Central Otago
We wake up at the crack of dawn today, drop off our rental car, and hop on a bus headed to Clyde — the start of the Central Otago Rail Trail. The Rail Trail was an active railroad until the middle of the 1900’s, and in 1990 work began to remove the tracks and turn it into a trail for hiking, cycling, and horseback riding. The trail opened in 2001, and has increasingly become a draw for the region.
We start the trail from the easternmost point, with 160 km in front of us until we get to Middlemarch where we’ll board a train to Dunedin. Hopping on our mountain bikes, we ride for a km or two when Eric spots a sign for…a hedge maze! We make a necessary detour, and run through the tall, green, well-maintained and difficult hedge maze. It takes a few tries until we finally make our way to the center, with Eric leading the way after Gloriane gets lost and ends up at the beginning.
Back on the trail, we pass through tiny hamlets with populations of a few hundred, and we take in the idyllic scenery. Sheep and cows everywhere, wandering through fields purple with wild thyme. The countryside with its unhurried pace is serene and bucolic, entirely quiet save the occasional bleating of sheep and the continuous crunching of the gravel under our tires.
After lunching at Chatto Creek Tavern, we meet up with Trail Treks, the outfit providing us with horses to do 15 kms to our next stop. Our guide is Kelly, a native Kiwi who has been riding horses since the age of 5. Saddled up English style, we slowly mosey down the trail at a pace of 5 km/hr. Gloriane and Kelly have fun coming up with a list of idioms having to do with riding horses:
- champing at the bit
- rearing to go
- handing the reins over
- free rein
- putting the cart before the horse
- hold your horses
- home James and don’t spare the horses!
- neck and neck
- pee like a race horse
Eric lags a few yards behind because his horse, Dougie, likes to take it easy and make stops for mouthfuls of grass. Dougie seems to be a donkey trapped in a horse’s body, and it’s not until Eric learns how to make Dougie trot with a little kick that he manages to catch up to the rest of the group. Gloriane’s horse Charla, on the other hand, breaks into a canter at one point, and Kelly keeps having to head her off to keep her in check.
After the horses, we bike another 7 km to Lauder Store, our accommodations for the night. Finding out our dinner reservations are 15 km away, Pam, the friendly proprietor, generously offers us a ride to Ophir. There, in Pitches Store, we have a beautiful meal — much better than we imagined was possible so far off the beaten track. Our first day on the trail ends with a magnificent sunset.
Wakatipu By Waka
Despite the go-go-go pace of Queenstown, we decide to take it down a notch today. Get up late, eat a light breakfast, and then drive up past swaths of mountain lupine to the top of Lake Wakatipu. We get lunch at a little cafe in Glenorchy, and while there we find a kayak outfitter in Kinloch who can take us out on the lake and up the river above.
Kinloch is, basically, a lodge and some campsites, and is accessible only via a 10km gravel road after driving 20km past Glenorchy. Our kayak guide Bas turns out to be from the Netherlands — yet another transplant in the Queenstown area, lured in by the beautiful and accessible landscape. We head out from the north end of Wakatipu, a sapphire-blue, 80km-long glacier puddle.
We land on a rocky beach some ways south and embark on foot toward an unidentified ruin a ways into the forest. Bas shows us the remains of what appears to be an English settlement, probably over a hundred years old, but with no concrete info or formal research, he doesn’t know for sure. All that’s left are some rock-walled terraces, a couple of collapsed chimneys, and a telegraph wire that appears now and again through the leaf mold.
Back in our kayaks, we paddle back up to the meeting of the Dart River and Lake Wakatipu, and head up through the currents. On the way, our accommodating guide offers to tow the paddle-weary Gloriane, who happily accepts the free ride. We wander around in the wetlands and flats for a bit, then settle in on the shore for a beer before heading back home.
Routeburn Tramps
Our vow to stay on the outside of Queenstown still intact after a night’s rest, it’s back into the trusty Yaris and toward the mountains. Today is a day of ‘tramping’ (Kiwi for ‘hiking’), but we stop first in Glenorchy to check out the local scene. And…there’s nothing much to see, so after a snack we hit the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks”.
The Great Walks are a handful of world-class hikes spread throughout NZ. Routeburn is near Queenstown, in the Fiordland region; our time only grants us a day-long in-and-out, but the whole track is 3-4 days long. The well-built track leads us across swaying cable bridges and into a beech forest, alongside a gorge filled with the bluest water we’ve ever seen.
Frequent stops to cool our feet in glacial melt streams keep us energized. We make it as far as Routeburn Flats hut, where other hikers are resting up for the next leg or staying the night. A bit past there, after a steep uphill, we decide we’ve reached halfway and head back down the mountain to the sheep pastures below.
Back in Queenstown (vow notwithstanding, we still gotta eat!), we stumble across The Cow restaurant in an old cow shed, hidden in a back alley. After a long hike, what we need most is nourishment, and their spaghetti Bolognese is exactly what we’re looking for.
Mario Kart For Grown-ups
Sunrise over the Banks Peninsula. Another breakfast with eggs from right outside our door and a quick goodbye to the alpacas, and we’re back in the Yaris on our way to the Christchurch airport. We’re treated to spectacular aerial views of the Southern Alps on our way south to Queenstown.
Once off the plane and out of the airport, we take care of some logistics and tramp up an hour-long climb to the top of the gondola to get in the Queenstown adventureland spirit. We didn’t hoof it all this way just for the view, though — we did it for the luge!
We saw this on the internets a while back, and knew it had to happen. The Queenstown luge is like real-life Mario Kart, and we bomb it a couple of times, first on the Scenic Track (Mushroom Circuit) and then on the Advanced Track (Rainbow Road). Pretty fun, but it would be better with Golden Mushrooms and Banana Peels.
Back down in the town, we stumble across a moa! We thought these bigger-than-ostrich flightless birds were extinct, but there’s one sitting right in the center of Queenstown. Wandering around looking for dinner, we find that Queenstown is *completely* overrun by adrenaline-junkie tourists, and vow to stay out of town as much as possible for the next three days…
Banks and Back
We’ve given ourselves only one day to wander around Akaroa and the Banks peninsula, and we fill it up. Will this be the most beautiful part of our trip? It’s looking like a serious contender. Morning brings a sunrise over the hills around the harbor. We cook up a delicious breakfast with multi-colored eggs from multi-colored chickens living 50 feet from us, and step outside to hang out with “the boys”, the five Suri alpacas sharing the property with us.
After walking around the property, dodging sheep poo and swinging on what looks like a Great Depression-era rope swing high up in the hills, we eat a quick lunch and drop back down into Akaroa. We pick up a couple of pies (somewhere between a souffle and a pasty) to eat later and visit The Giant’s House.
The Giant’s House is a nearly 20-year work always-in-progress by Josie Martin. The grounds of this house are saturated with mosaic sculptures and random oddities. The amount of detail is incredible! And so much character. Gloriane in particular is enchanted with all the quirky touches carved into the space, and with Josie’s matching personality.
Done with civilization for the day, we drive up and then back down to Le Bons Bay. Tucked in between two ridges and well-protected from the South Pacific beyond, calm Le Bons reflects the deep azure of the sky above. We tiptoe across tidal flats and up the inlet that feeds into the bay, through a pine forest, and finally back to our car for an early night watching The Whale Rider on DVD.
