South Island: Day 2/3 (Lake Tekapo, Mount Cook, Queenstown, and Milford Sound)

All of our days on this south island trip started early. We kept catching busses at 7AM (towards the end we did catch one as late as 8:30 or 9). The problem with catching busses so early is that we both had to shower, get ready, pack, check out, and walk to wherever we were catching our bus. It really took a lot out of us, having to get up that early every morning. It didn’t help that nothing was open that early for us to get coffee/tea and breakfast. Every time we came across packets of instant coffee, Mom would stash them away in her suitcase for our next stop!

Day 2 had us leaving Christchurch and ending up in Queenstown. This trip took all day because we stopped in so many different locations. Newman’s, the bus company that we used, has a policy that a driver can only drive for so many hours. This translates into a LOT of rest and ‘comfort’ stops. I felt like we were just getting off of the bus every hour! Some of the stops were quite nice, though.

Our first big stop was Lake Tekapo (pronounced teh-ka-po, with the emphasis on ‘teh’). This is a gorgeous lake with incredible views of Mount Cook in the distance. All of the landscape in the south island seemed to be magnified in one way or another. The mountains were huge, being a part of the Southern Alps. The water was clearer and bluer and more dramatic because of the glaciers. Even river beds were more dramatic because they had once been carved out by glaciers. Anyways, so we stop at Lake Tekapo, take lots of pictures, and then wander over to the Church of the Good Shepherd, where we take ever more pictures.

I should mention here that on this day, all of our stops were deluged with Asian tourists. There was a huge double-decker tour bus filled with Asians who were following our same timetable, so they were always at every stop we made. It was nice in that it gave us plenty of people to ask to take pictures of the two of us, but it was annoying because everything was crowded and loud.

The next time we got off of the bus, we were at Mount Cook (or as close as we were going to be getting). My mom and I had lunch reservations in a really flash dining room at the hotel, the Hermitage. One whole wall was giant multi-story windows facing the mountains, Mount Cook in particular. After being on the bus for so long, it was really pleasant to have a real meal and not just a toasted sandwich in some random stop. We hung out here for a good while, wandering around and taking an obscene amount of pictures of the snow-covered mountains. The air was so clear, everything was still and pretty, the weather was even comfortable. It was a good stop.

A couple of random stops later, we ended up in Queenstown. I really liked Queenstown as a city. It is a lot like I imagine Tahoe or Aspen is. (Actually, a delegation from one of those cities – I forget which one – recently visited Queenstown and warned the city council to make sure Queenstown doesn’t end up like those cities: unaffordable for the average Kiwi, a city of rich holiday-ers.) It is set in the mountains on a lake (carved out by glaciers, of course), and it is incredibly picturesque. Great lighting on the street for the evening. Mom and I had a light dinner (wine and bread with dips) in a café/restaurant. We had two seats at a bench that opened up to a window overlooking the street, so we got to people watch while we ate. Of course, this is the south island, so everything started closing down, so after wandering for awhile, we headed back to try and get some sleep. (I emphasize try. This was the night we had some big group of late-teens/twenty-somethings running back and forth between rooms until about 5AM, and they definitely did not let us sleep.)

It was a shame that we hadn’t gotten any sleep because our next day was one of our longest. It was our Milford Sound excursion! As the crow flies, Milford Sound is really close to Queenstown, but you can’t drive straight there. You have to circle around the mountains, so it takes ages. Milford Sound is on the west coast of the south island, which means it rains something like 250+ days a year. This is because it gets the warm air currents that come from Australia and have picked up water over the Tasman Sea, but as the air starts to climb the mountains, it dumps the collected water as rain and snow. But anyways, this isn’t supposed to be a meteorology lesson. The point is that is was raining when we were at Milford, but that was really good in a way. When it rains, thousands of waterfalls appear all over the sound (which, by the way, isn’t really a sound. A sound is carved out by rivers, and this was carved out by glaciers, making it a fjord. But that is once again beside the point). They appear when it starts to rain because the running water has to find somewhere to go, and within 30 minutes of the end of the rainfall, the waterfalls have disappeared again. It was really cool. Mom took a picture of me with them as the background, and she conveniently positioned me to make it seem like a waterfall was bouncing off of my head.

Of course, the actual boat ride was awesome as well. We took a 3 hour tour of the sound (fjord), going all the way out to where it meets the Tasman. Mom did great on the boat ride; thank goodness for seasickness medication. As we got to the sea, the waves started getting a lot bigger. Also, there was some crazy wind out there! I was on the top deck with this lady, and the captain comes in the speaker, saying, “I would just like to warn our passengers on the top deck that we will be experiencing high winds for about the next half hour.” As soon as he said that, the winds HIT, and hit big time. It was so crazy because you could actually see the gusts as they travelled to you. They would make the water swirl up above the regular sea level. Very cool. I got a really good picture of the ‘water tornado.’ One other cool thing was the dolphins that followed our boat as it left the dock. They were so playful, playing it up for all the tourists with cameras. They would race alongside the boat, jump in the air, and just basically seemed to be having a lot of fun.

The ride back was pretty uneventful. Mom and I were both exhausted and fell asleep. Well, slept for as long as you can when you keep being tossed around sharp corners in the New Zealand bush. Back in Queenstown, Mom got very happy when she bought herself a REALLY NICE New Zealand souvenir, and then we went out for dinner. I was very excited because Mom actually went to an Indian restaurant with me. I love Indian food (partly because of the non-prevalence of dairy products), and Mom isn’t particularly fond of spices. She had chicken korma, though, and even tried some of my more spicy food. It was a very enjoyable dinner.