Amazing. Incredible. Mind-blowing. Breathtaking. You could find more synonymous adjectives
here. I'll include some of my favorite photos here, but definitely check the full album out by clicking
here or scrolling down to it in the right hand column. Here's my all-time favorite:
That was view that we had from our parking spot at the base of the
Coronet Peak ski field, at about 9:30 am, on Sunday. The skiing itself wasn't amazing - the whole area was open due to extensive snowmaking, but was pretty icy - but the fact that we could ski in August, with panoramas like this, made it completely worth it. That and the fact that the exchange rate has plummeted to make the Kiwi dollar just about 67 cents US...this compared to 80 cents just a couple weeks ago.
To get back into some sort of chronological order, we headed out to Queenstown Saturday morning - a four hour drive. We ran into Julia, Katie and Sven there, amazingly just as they came back from a two hour kayaking trip out on Lake Wakatipu. We grabbed lunch at a cool Irish pub (I had an obligatory Guinness, of course) and then headed up to the Skyline Gondola, which takes you up a 1500 ft. vertical rise immediately above the city. We got some spectacular views of Queenstown, the lake and the Remarkables. It was just really unbelievable. Up on top of this, well, mountain I guess, we went luging, which is kind of like an alpine slide,
but the track is wide enough to have several people going at once, and you can
steer your sled. The races got intense, with 8 of us going around slippery, banked turns.
After a night on the town Saturday - the nightlife in Queenstown is very good - Katie and I split off from the other six in our group (who variously went bungy jumping and kayaking again, something I'll do another time) to meet up with Andrew and his friend Mo to go skiing at Coronet Peak, which is a half hour from the city. As you can see above, it was pretty great up there.
We hit the slopes (along with quite a few other people that day) and had a blast, despite the icy conditions. It probably doesn't help that the mountain isn't that tall (5400 ft.) and there's a lot of traffic on it, what with the night skiing and being so close to Queenstown. Regardless, it was fun to get back out on skis again, and especially in August. After skiing all day, we headed back to Dunedin, along with a lovely stop on the road to see
the sunset outside Alexandra. After a quick meat pie at the 24 (a delicacy here), we were home and not-so-ready to start the week. And to think I wasn't doing anything this weekend as late as 4 pm on Friday...
Sorry for the delay, but I couldn't post this without pictures. Queenstown was fantastic, as to be expected. A few notes:
We stayed in an incredible condo with views overlooking Lake Wakatipu. Many thanks to Andrew's parents for putting me up, of course. Amenities abounded, including a fireplace, heated tile floors and towel racks in the bathroom, bathrobes, and most importantly at the time of our arrival in the afternoon: satellite television, which meant, of course, I could watch a little of the Red Sox owning the Rockies in Game 1. That made me happy, particularly since Andrew and his parents put up with my excited delirium at the Sox doing so well.
Easily the highlight of the trip was going to dinner at a smaller restaurant on the (relative) outskirts of town, recommended by a local. It's called Vknow Restaurant (a well-deserved name) and if there were ever a restaurant I would recommend to someone visiting NZ, it's this one. It's owned and operated by a husband and wife - he serves and handles wine, she's the chef. Even though the husband handled a full restaurant of about 30 people by himself, the service was exceptional and attentive. Throughout the several courses of our meals, he would come by with a different wine that best goes with the particular course - I can easily say I've never enjoyed or appreciated wine as much as I did that night. The wine list was clever, too, organized into sensible categories by quality. For those may know NZ wine, we had Quartz Reef Pinot Gris, Ngatarawa Silks Chardonnay, Akarua Rose, some Bollinger NV with desert, and I believe there was one other wine...maybe a Cabernet Sauvignon? I'm not sure. Regardless, a great night with some delicious food and fine wine.
