Our Travel Blog: Mt Cook to Queenstown

Saturday, March 1

Another driving day!

Even though it was only a 3 hour drive, we took 7 hours because of stops.

We left in bright sunny weather at 9:15 am. We noticed how Lake Pukaki is receding:

We stopped at the NZ Alpine Lavender Farm, one of the largest organic lavender farms in the southern hemisphere. Anton was tickled pink to get lavender ice cream sprinkled with bee pollen. Really!

Although the best time to view the fields would be December and January, we still thought the lavender fields looked pretty. They had muskoka chairs placed in the middle of the fields for us to sit and relax:

Check out the size of these pine cones!

We made our way to Twizel (long i sound), a small town of 2000 people, about 45 minutes from Mt Cook. There is a small airport here that was created to facilitate travel to Mt Cook. Aviator Sir Harry Wigley planted a stake in the ground, drove straight one mile in his Chevvy Bel-Air, and planted another stake. We wouldn't have recognized this to be an airport:

imagecredit: https://www.airportpukaki.co.nz/about/history

Frankie had planned a ride in a biplane to surprise Anton, but cancelling this pretty much paid for her new cell phone. So we watched another couple take off for a ride instead:

Half an hour after Twizel, we stopped at the tiny town of Omarama (meaning "place of light"), population 350. We passed on the Wrinkly Rams Cafe because it had nothing that Frankie could eat, and absolutely no one could tell us where the community market was, so we moved on.

We stopped for a view of the Omarama Clay Cliffs, which were formed by layers of silt and gravel deposited by either ancient glaciers or lakes. Then the layers were lifted up by an active fault, and this has formed very interesting geological formations. Frankie wanted to drive to them, but Anton said the viewpoint was good enough:

About half an hour past Omarama, we went through the Lindis Pass. It is one of New Zealand's highest roads at 971 meters (3,186 ft). It is a beautiful mountain pass covered in tussock grass. The road is 60 km long through this section.

This is the official lookout at the highest point, 971 m (3,186 ft):

We tried a side trail, but it was straight up a hill, and we turned around half way:

We decided the official viewpoint was safer!

Half an hour after the Lindis viewpoint, we stopped at the village of Tarras, population 606. There are no Tim Hortons, but everywhere in NZ you can find public washrooms like this one:

Tarras is famous as being the home of Shrek, a merino sheep who evaded shearing for 6 years. He was eventually found in a nearby cave, and his shearing was broadcast on national television (he had become that well-known!). By then his wool weighed 60 pounds.

imagecredit: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/country/511733/farmer-remembers-the-pivotal-moment-godlike-creature-shrek-the-sheep-was-found

We stopped to see Roaring Meg:

Just outside of Queenstown, we stopped at the Kawarau Bungy Center to see if we could see any brave/crazy ???? bungy jumpers. This was the first commercial bungy operation in the world. Here you can jump off the 43 meter Kawarau Suspension Bridge that was built in 1880, and it will only cost you $300 per jump. We were happy enough to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6lYVN4DbkTY

Then our last 25 minutes of driving, and we were finally at our Queenstown hotel! This is a much larger city, population 27,700. But it does not even come in on the list of New Zealand's top 20 cities in size. The city is built around a bay. This is the view from our hotel room (on a busy road):

We walked into the city, downhill, which took about 20 minutes, and just walked around. This is an actual roundabout, it's just a circle painted on the road. We've seen a few of these:

It felt different than Auckland or Wellington. More tourist based, kind of like Banff. We found the famous Fergburger, and were lucky enough to only have a few people in line ahead of us. We found a spot outside on a bench to enjoy, they were big and messy!