Live the Live ™

Boy, things change in a heartbeat ’round here…

We made it to Queenstown. Thank God the weather finally co-operated once we got out of Haast, and we actually saw some freakin’ sunshine on the way here to the Canyons Lodge.

Check this out…the photos do not exaggerate, and we have this place to ourselves, at least for now!

http://www.thecanyonslodge.com

We took what’s called the Crowns Pass down to Queenstown and we got some amazing video and photos of our descent into the Qtown area. It was described by a buddy of ours as an airplane landing into Queenstown, and that’s not far from the truth!

The owners of the lodge here, Andy and Mel, are really cool, and we’ve settled in nicely. We’ve had some drinks with them and discussed what we thought was our itinerary, only to find out how quickly and easily things change.

First of all, my rafting trip has been moved. The severe rain that they’ve had in this area actually shut down rafting for today, and they told me they wouldn’t know if they were rafting tomorrow morning until the last minute. So the plan was for me to show up and see what happens.

Well…looks now like I will be rafting another day. The reason is that we are taking a helicopter ride to Milford Sound, which includes cruising over the sound, as well as landing on a freaking glacier. (Yes, I was totally talked into this!)

We are no longer doing a 6-hour bus, then boat, then plane trip back…and instead are doing an all-encompassing helicopter ride for about 2 1/2 hours. (If I knew my Mom was reading this blog, you can bet your ass I wouldn’t be writing it!)

Anyway…more later…but we’re here…and that’s a major accomplishment!

OK…caught up for now…

If you’re able to follow a map of the western coast of New Zealand, you’ll see that Haast is sort of the last town along the coast before the road heading south to Queenstown turns inward toward the mountains. That’s where we are right now…having a snack before our journey continues. We’ve got about half of our trip left…hoping that the weather, at least, gets better.

It has been raining…and raining hard, pretty much our entire trip since we left this morning about 3 1/2 hours ago. We’ve seen no glaciers anywhere…no beautiful views of famous lakes…nothing but rain and fog.

I’ve found a good way to a make the journey a little bit less stressful: I followed a big tour bus. Not only does this guy know the roads far better than I ever will, but I can determine my own course of action in my brick-of-a rental car by watching what he does ahead of me. It worked really well for most of the trip until the bus turned off for a scenic stop. (Kind of a joke since you can’t see anything…but they did have restrooms there, too.)

Still in Haast, taking advantage of Internet connections here…

January 3, 2011

It’s about 7 AM, and we’re starting to pack our stuff back into the car for the ride to Queenstown.

It’s been raining on and off all night, but the real massive downpours started around 2 AM, and they’re continuing even now. Packing the car is not a problem, fortunately, because there is a carport type-thing in front of our ground-floor room, so I can roll everything out the door and right into the back of the car.

But the drive will be a bitch.

Much like yesterday, if it keeps raining, there’s no reason for us to make a stop apart from food, gas or bathroom needs. There will be no scenery to see. But my biggest concern is all this rain could’ve washed out a road ahead of us somewhere in the mountains and we won’t really know until we get there.

Internet connections at this hotel are not happening because the bad weather is blocking satellite feeds. And the local TV offers nothing as far as any valuable information. So we’ll just have to take it as it comes…slow and steady. I will be very glad when we’ve checked into our room at the Canyons Lodge in Queenstown later today/tonight.

There’s two couples from Australia staying in a room across from us and they came here to get away from the rain (and now flooding) of their home country…no such luck! They’re also on their way to Queenstown. They mentioned that they heard it will be clearing up toward Queenstown today, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed!

No Internet connection for a couple of days until a stop in Haast…

January 2, 2011

We’re having lunch at Jacksons Historic Pub, established in 1868 in the small town of Jacksons, which officially brings us to the West coast of the South Island of New Zealand.

Our ride to this point has been a real disappointment. Arthur’s Pass, the drive everyone raves about, with the quintessential “Lord of the Rings” vistas, and the drive we’ve been looking forward to our entire trip, was totally blocked by clouds and fog, and hampered by rain. We’ve driven over three hours to get to this point, and I really have no idea how much further we have to go…but if it doesn’t clear up, it will take a very long time. Ironically, had the weather been beautiful, it might’ve taken us even longer, because we would’ve stopped to take a lot of pictures. But we’ve had none of that this trip so far. Major bummer, not just for me but for Kelly, too.

Our lunch at Jackson’s was pretty darn good. Seems they’re known for their home-baked meat pies, and we shared one of chicken and one of venison. This place would great to hang out in for hours, pounding down a lot of beers, but we have miles to go before we sleep…

Well, we made it to Franz Josef. It is now quite a bit later. Our trip of about 410 km (about 250 miles) took us almost seven hours. That is not unusual, even without the downpours we had to deal with over most of the trip. That’s the craziness of the roads in this country, especially on the South Island: steep, winding, no guard rails in some of the most dangerous places…just nuts. We saw no scenery to speak of, though we knew it was around us all the time, covered in mist and fog. The winding roads were a bit of a challenge for the crappy rental car we have, and I’m sure that added to the amount of time it took us to get here.

Other than in the cities of New Zealand, where you will find several lanes on larger highways, most of the rural New Zealand roads are one lane each way. Every few miles you get an area where the road widens, and it allows the slower vehicles to get to the left and the faster ones to pass on the right. We’re one of those slow vehicles!

Another crazy phenomenon down here is/are the bridges: even though you have two lanes, one going each way, when you get to a bridge, it’s only one lane wide and you have to give way to the person on the other side who got to the bridge first. Fortunately, most Kiwi drivers are polite and follow the rules of the road. But some of the longer bridges do have a wider part in the middle in case two vehicles from opposite directions face off and choose to stare each other down.

The map says that our trip tomorrow to Queenstown will be shorter than today’s…a mere 404 km vs 410 km! Unfortunately, our motel receptionist here at the extremely unfancy Alpine Glacier Motel says there’s a big storm rolling in (bigger than we’ve already been experiencing) and with it will come a lot more rain and perhaps some thunderstorms.
We wanted to see the Franz Josef glacier…that’s part of the reason why we’re here. But they’ve closed the road to the glacier–at least for today.

Our hope is that if the weather is nice enough tomorrow morning, we will drive to the glacier, to see it at least, before continuing south. Not too far from here is another glacier town, Fox Glacier, and there’s a really nice place to have breakfast overlooking Lake Matheson. Lake Matheson is probably the most photographed lake in all of New Zealand because of its amazing glass-like reflected properties, with a backdrop of some of the most beautiful mountains you’ve ever seen.

Of course, it could simply rain all day and all that will be washed away. Hoping for the best. Hell, I’ll settle for mediocre!

Some random things that make New Zealand unique: (and yes, I’m writing this while my wife goes into one art gallery after another. I prefer to be out in the fresh air.)

Grilled cheese is called “toasted bread,” and is pretty much all that Ava is eating here, though they do occasionally have chicken nuggets. But she has ventured forth a little bit in her culinary adventures, and now enjoys “toasted bread” with cheese and ham. She’s always liked bacon, but ham is a new addition. She also had her first session of actually eating carrot sticks.
Funny…Ava does love all kinds of foods, but veggies have not been on the top of her list. Since she eats loads of fruit, we never really worried about it much. But having her eat carrot sticks means we’ve doubled the amount of vegetables she now eats. (Previously, it was only corn.)

Whenever you check into a hotel room in New Zealand, plain or fancy, you get a small bottle of milk for the fridge. Your choices are “slim” or “blue,” which is the full-fat. Many hotels have small kitchen areas so that you can make your own coffee or tea, but the milk thing is really kinda funny. They hand it to you as you check in.

Just about every bottle of wine in this country comes with a twist top. The only time we’ve encountered corks is at Clos Henri, where in some cases they offer you a choice between the two. And of course, any of their wines that are exported to France will have corks. But waiters and waitresses here have it easy: one twist, and the bottle’s open.
The jury is still out on which is better. A twist top offers a hermetically sealed bottle that is impervious to contamination. But cork aficionados claim that the natural cork material allows for the tiniest bit of oxygen to enter the bottle, something that is desirable if you’re aging your wine. You can age the same wine in cork and in a twist top, and the result after a few years will be totally different. Most New Zealand wines are meant to be drunk immediately…and we don’t seem to have a problem with that!

Your typical Aussie phrases that you learned watching “Crocodile Dundee” apply here. “No worries” is big. They will say “thank you” when they ring up your tab, not after you’ve paid it. (“That will be thirty dollars, thank you.”) And “Sweet as” is a local phrase that I haven’t quite gotten the hang of yet, but it’s when someone makes an opinion you agree with, sort of….I think. Gotta still figure that one out.

With gas prices being what they are, it’s common to be asked how much gas you want to buy. Even if you’re pumping for yourself, the machine wants you to plug in a dollar amount. There is a fill-up button, too, however. But I get the feeling that gas is so expensive here, that many people don’t just automatically fill up…they’re very careful about the amount of gas they buy.

Coffee lingo is interesting. A double espresso is easy enough to order, despite the fact that portions here are ridiculously small. A double here is less than a single back home. A “long black” is a double espresso with a bit of hot water. Nobody understands the concept of iced coffee, which is a staple of Kelly’s and my existence. So we make our own every day using the French press in our room, and keep it in the fridge to have every morning. We use the “blue” milk with it. Full cream is available, but it’s too thick for coffee. And I haven’t seen half-and-half anywhere.
Speaking of that…ice. Impossible to get enough of. You can occasionally find a liquor store that will sell you a bag of “party ice,” but there are no ice machines in hotels and so you have to call room service to get some. They bring you this tiny little ice bucket that holds five half-melted cubes for your drink. I went through four of them last night alone!
And speaking of portions…forget about getting a good, stiff drink. I literally had to order what our waiter called “a double-double” to get any significant amount of vodka in my glass. The George Hotel, where we’re staying in Christchurch, has made me my best true martini so far: Belvedere vodka, shaken, nice and cold with little bits of ice floating in the glass. It’s no surprise so many of the locals and Aussie travelers stick to beer and wine. It’s cheap and it’s good.
My experience with New Zealand beer has been limited, but everything I’ve tried I’ve liked. But I’m not a big beer drinker, so to me, beer is beer. I’ve seen no American beers here, by the way. The only familiar brands are Heineken and Corona.

As we walked around Christchurch today, we hopped on an historic trolley, which circled the main part of town. Ava loved it. There was an option to add a gondola ride on the river that goes by the botanical gardens which we walked through today. Beautiful gardens…flowers, even veggies, and amazing trees that must be hundreds of years old. I found it funny that they call gondola rides “punting” here. (Would you like to go punting?)

Our New Years celebration was pretty laid-back: we went back up to our room after dinner and just hung out, sipping some nice No 1 Family Estate Cuvee Rose and watching–I hate to admit this–a Tinkerbell movie. That’s gotta be a first in my life! How the mighty have fallen…

We were one of the first to ring in the new year and we saw the fireworks lit off the Auckland Sky Tower on TV…pretty cool.

Somewhere during the course of the evening, we definitely had a little earthquake tremor…a bit unsettling. I noticed it…Kelly did not, so maybe it was just gas!

Anyway…off to the center of Christchurch for a little exploration. It’s a beautiful day, sunny skies and 70’s.  For us…the afternoon is ahead. For most of you: 5 1/2 hours til New Years! Have a happy!