Hello Queenstown!

I’m back in Queenstown again! It’s been six months since I was last here. It’s also been two months since I left Paihia and I’m more than ready to settle down again and take a rest from travelling. Seriously, living out of a backpack and being on the go all the time can be pretty tiring. Traveling from city to city, moving from one hostel to the next, constantly packing and unpacking, having to familiarize yourself to new places, getting around in unfamiliar territory, and having to constantly introduce yourself as you meet new people all the time gets exhausting after a while. I’m looking forward to having a break and getting back into a normal routine again.

A lot has happened since I returned to the South Island. For nearly the whole month of April I worked a few hours a day for accommodation (through HelpX) at two different places around Abel Tasman National Park and Golden Bay. The work was mostly random chores: painting, chopping wood, cleaning, clearing bush for building projects, cleaning up storm damage, and eradicating invasive plant species from the forest. For the latter part of the month, I met up with my friend Ben (a French guy I worked with in the Bay of Islands) and we were able to work together and explore the area for a few weeks. Golden Bay was very nice and once the weather cleared up after a rather harsh Easter weekend storm, we managed to get out and see some really nice places. One of the highlights of our time there included a visit to Wharariki Beach–a big long sandy bay with lots of interesting rock formations, sea cliffs, caves, and even a little natural pool where baby seals play in. And despite being a rather popular beach for tourists, it’s big enough (and isolated enough) to where you can walk out away from the crowds and feel like you have the whole place to yourselves.

Once our work was done there we hitched on down the West Coast to pick up Ben’s van, which had broken down a few weeks earlier in a town so small you would have missed it if you blinked. Fortunately there was a mechanic there and he was able to get the parts needed to get it going again. We then spent a couple days driving through Arthur’s Pass to Christchurch, where we ended up staying with a host family for a night. I forget exactly how Ben knew them (something like his father’s friend of a friend), but they were so nice and warmly welcomed us into their home. They even made a nice dinner for us! I couldn’t have been more thankful for their generous Kiwi hospitality.

Afterwards, Ben and I parted ways as he went back to tour the North Island and I headed further south. Since being back on the South Island, I’ve managed to get around nearly the entire time by hitchhiking. Normally I would just take the bus, but I ran out of rides on my pass and wanted to try something a little more adventurous anyway. Hitching around New Zealand is still a popular way for travelers (and even locals) to see the country. Getting around in this manner requires a lot of patience and flexibility–I stood outside once in the rain for almost two hours. You may not get to where you’re going right away, but sometimes little detours can take you to some amazing places. It’s also good to have some degree of cautiousness as there are always weirdos around, no matter what country you’re in. But all the while I’ve been hitchhiking in New Zealand, I never had any incidents or uncomfortable moments. Instead I met lots of very nice and interesting people; both fellow travelers and locals, young and old.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the past month and half! It’s absolutely beautiful right now in Queenstown. I thought it was a beautiful place last time I was here in the spring, but the city really is at its best in autumn. The surrounding mountains are topped with fresh snow, the trees are showing off their vibrant fall colors, Lake Wakatipu looks so much clearer than from what I remember, the days are still somewhat warm, and at night the air is crisp and pure. I’ll be here for two months–until then I’ll be working and planning the next adventure.

Hitchhiking to Middle Earth

The other day I did something I would never do back home in the USA: hitchhiking. While it is technically legal in many states, it’s just not something many people do mostly due to safety concerns. Hitchhiking is really common in New Zealand however. It’s actually almost expected to find a traveler or two hitching for rides outside of the towns. Not that NZ doesn’t have its share of crazies driving around (every country does), but hitching here is relatively safe and with so many friendly Kiwis and fellow travelers on the road it’s fairly easy to get a ride.

So feeling adventurous, a few of my housemates and I decided to do a day trip out to Glenorchy at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu. We walked to the edge of town and before long a nice Danish girl offered us a lift on her way to work. She had been living in New Zealand for quite some time now and told us about some good places to hike to in the area. The drive was gorgeous! It’s quite curvy and narrow in most places as it hugs the lake’s coastline, and the scenery is incredible (which is a word I’ll be using a lot throughout the duration of my time in New Zealand I am sure). Some say that the road to Glenorchy from Queenstown is among the most scenic in the country. It’s definitely one of the best I’ve been on so far (photo credit goes to my friend Paul who was able to get a good photo from the road).

We got dropped off in Glenorchy and walked on over to the visitor’s center to see what there was to do nearby. The guy at the desk mentioned that there were a few Lord of the Rings filming locations in the area, so we walked back outside and got another lift from a Kiwi who took us a little ways up the road. He dropped us off and we proceeded walking through the countryside. We walked up the gravel road for about 20 minutes, watching LOTR tour buses passing by. Eventually an American couple offered us a ride and we ended up riding with them all the way into the valley where they filmed the scenes for Isengard, Lothlórien, and the landscape shots for the Misty Mountains. They were just out sightseeing as well. We found out they were originally on their way to work at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, but had to remain in New Zealand (one of the primary departure points to the southern continent) due to the U.S. government shutdown. They were good company and we were lucky to join them on their little adventure.

The road beyond Glenorchy goes north to an area called Paradise, which is a fitting name for the dramatic landscape it winds through (actually, it’s named after a species of duck native to NZ). We drove across big open fields surrounded by snow-capped mountains, through lush mossy beech forests, crossed small streams flowing across the roadway…it was quite the ride! It’s easy to see why they decided to film parts of LOTR here. It really felt like Middle Earth (with a lot less orcs running around of course). Fortunately they also had to go back to Queenstown afterwards so we rode all the way back into town with them before walking home.