Around The World – Queenstown, New Zealand
Today’s goal is to get to Queenstown, a bit noth of here, and spend my last night in the Jucy van at a campsite before checking it back in and moving into a conventional hotel in preparation for the end of my time in New Zealand. Rather than driving all the way back to Auckland to catch my flights to Vancouver, I’ll book a little hopper flight, should be easy right…
I woke up in the freezing campsite and hit the road towards Invercargill. Stopped at another Pita Pit for lunch, but sadly no sign of Russ Monro’s Indian motorcycle legacy that I could see. The movie is definitely worth watching.
Drove north on Hwy 6, through more spectacular mountains, lakes and rivers.
Drove into my final destination of Queenstown, a town on the edge of a huge lake surrounded by towering snow-peaked mountains. It’s clear this is an outdoor adventure town with skiing, snowboarding, bungy jumping, jet boat rides and a dozen other kinds of fun to be had.
Stopped at the campsite I selected from the Camping NZ app. The owner lady said the listing was in error as they don’t take overnight campers, only large groups with chaperones (and the more Christian the better it seemed). I sent a message via the app’s rating system and they quickly replied that they removed it. Nice response.
I went to the next campsite in the app and wow. Most sophisticated one I’ve been to yet. 2 blocks from the bustling town center, activity information, huge kitchen area, modern toilet/shower area, powered and unpowered sites plus bungalows. Unlimited Wifi for $5 for 24 hours. I had a shower and a much needed shave, I think I was to the point of scaring people.
Firing up the wifi, I booked two nights at a backpacker hostel right down in town. Tomorrow I’ll drop the van off at the Jucy office at the airport 5 minutes away, then hang out in town for two days, then catch a quick AirNZ flight back to Auckland.
Walked down into town, getting very cold as the sun went down. Wandered around, all the skiers and snowboarders were coming back after a day on the slopes. I found a nice pub-style restaurarnt and had spicy prawn hot pot. The waitress worked with the kitchen on a no-onion sauce for me, awesome. Had a couple of amber local microbrews and read my book for about 2 hours.
Back to the campsite, tried to heed nature’s call but the men’s room was closed for cleaning, the ladies’ was now designated unisex. I tried to open the door but realized there was a large electromagnet between me and relief from my beer. Saw the keypad next to the door and cursed not-so-silently, walked to the van, read the door code off my check-in papers and went successfully back to the bathrooms.
Back in the van, built my cave for the night, ran the engine for some heat and power and downloaded the waiting EVTV episode.
Got an email from my real-estate-agent-who-wants-to-move-to-Thailand buddy Sean that he’s arranged a tour of the Tesla factory for us on September 10! Woo hoo! This is an electric car geek’s Mecca and Holy Grail all wrapped up into one. In a mind-blowing small-world twist, our host will be Adam Slusser, a Tesla employee I have met twice at two Tesla showroom locations in the greater LA area. He may vaguely remember me as the guy who converted a Porsche 914 to electric drive, we’ll see when I get there.
Set my alarm for 8 to prep the van for drop-off before 10. I have to say the van was the perfect mode of transport for this trip. In the Philippines and Australia, I was hopping from place to place, the in-between not very interesting. Here in NZ, the in-between was almost the best part. I had the opportunity to pull over to the side of the road and take 500 pictures, or spend half a day hiking on a glacier or decide to stop early or keep going further than I had originally planned. Not possible on a bus and the train system just doesn’t work well for travellers. I would have also missed my Hobbit travel buddies from England. When booking the van, it seemed cheap but then the little fees started adding up, like the one-way surcharge, and the Stress-Free insurance was actually $1 more per day than the rental fee, but given the flexibility and the relative cheapness of the campsites along the way, I would do it again in a flash.
In the morning, I drove to the hostel and put all of my stuff in the storage room. Then I drove to the airport, found the Jucy location and pulled in. I quickly realized I forgot to fill the petrol tank, so I went back out, filled up, and came back. The check-in guy was cool, he said as long as it comes back full of fuel and nothing broken and hanging off, they’re OK. I started to walk back to center of Queenstown, realized I forgot my phone in the van while using the GPS to get there, walked back, got it. My brain is not in full gear today. The Jucy guy said the airport taxis are expensive back to town so I walked to a nearby bus stop. The next one was scheduled in 2 hours, so I walked the 7 km back to town, along a beautiful walking and bike path along the lakeshore. I would have missed this if I spent the money on a taxi or the bus had a better schedule.
I got back to the hostel and the front desk guy said my room will be ready around 1:30, so I bought 24 hours of Wifi for $4 and sat by the fireplace at the front entrance and surfed. I checked in at 1:30 and took my stuff up to the room. It’s set up as dual bunkbeds and a single bed, with ensuite toilet and shower rooms. I think this is better than what I booked on the web site, an 8 bunk dorm with no ensuite. The front desk guy must have taken pity on an old man. My roomies are a young couple Chris and Frances and a young guy Ash all from Yorkshire who are on a bus tour around the country, and an English girl who is travelling solo.
I’m in one of the top bunks, last guy in the room of course and the thin round metal rungs on the ladder are really bad for climbing up and down. The plugs for charging our dozens of electronic devices are all at one far corner of the room, really bad planning as I can’t stretch my cables far enough for the phone or laptop and sit in the bed and read or surf.
I walked outside and half a block down to the heart of town, then walked all over, looking for something for a late lunch. Had a tuna Pita Pit of course and then a hot chocolate at the Ballarat, the same place as dinner last night. I took my time and read my book. I walked back to the room and put my remaining van food in the give away area of the kitchen but kept my big bottle of DC and put it on the balcony, should be nice and cold at a top of 4C in the heart of the New Zealand winter.
For dinner I went back to Ballarat Trading Company, had exactly the same prawn hot pot, beer and brownie as last night. I tend to thrive on consistency. It’s my superpower.
The next morning I heard the kids wake up around 6:30, getting ready for snowboarding or whatever kids do these days. I can literally be the father of almost every person staying here. There’s even a hockey team from Canada.
I fell asleep again and finally woke at 9:30, glorious soft bed and warm temperature! Warm shower. Did a load of laundry. Bought another 24 hours of Wifi for $4. Transferred photos from phone, categorized and started Google Photo Backup.
Started seeing problems with my HP 64GB thumb drive. Downloading new videos to it, says Drive is Write-Protected. Hmm, nope, not possible. Also saw some corrupted directories so I think the filesystem is buggered. Will copy off / watch videos then reformat.
Had another tuna Pita Pit for lunch and then walked through town. Found the bus stop to the airport – it runs every 15 minutes and takes 15 minutes to get there so I just have to work backwards tomorrow, leave the hostel at 11AM, wake up no later than 9.
Queenstown is really is a nice little town, striking lake and snow-capped mountains, definitely tourist oriented. Restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, hostels and a mind-bogglingly high number of shops where you can sign up for things to do in the area. I don’t know how they can sustain every other store on the street being an activity-signup-store. Skiing, snowboarding, helicopter skiing, jet boating on the lake and rivers, paragliding behind a boat, bungee jumping, bike riding, hiking, canyon swings and lake cruises and more.
Walked around town, had pizza for dinner at London Bar/Restaurant. Talked into it by the guy at the front door. Had margarita pizza with really good pesto flavor. Music on too loud and all hard surfaces, makes everyone shout. I’ve never understood this about the restaurant industry. The guy at the front door asked for my feedback because they had only been open a short time so I let him know, tried not to be the old man telling everyone to get off his lawn.
The next morning I woke up about 7:30, the kids apparently are not going on the slopes today. Up and had a shower then went out into the lounge and surfed, then did final packing. Just before 10 I checked out by giving back my RFID room door card and pillowcase. The cleaning crew uses the lack of pillowcase to know who has left so they know to do a bedding change.
Walked out to the bus stop, got on the bus at 11:00, costs $12 for the ride to the airport. The bus went to a main bus stop near the airport but then the driver shut off the bus, got out and walked away. The 6 of us on the bus just looked around, trying to figure out what’s going on… Another driver showed up a few minutes later and took us to the airport.
I went over to the Air New Zealand check-in kiosk and this is where my latest nightmare started. The machine didn’t recognize my passport or my record locator code. A staff lady noticed that I had booked for 22 September, not 22 August! Correct time and day but I clicked on the wrong month on the booking web site… So over to the customer service counter I go.
There were two staff members sitting at the desk but one had a Closed sign in front of her… I waited about 15 minutes for the one guy ahead of me to finish up, then I explained to my new friend Fernando what I had done. He initially told me there were no seats to Auckland left for today but when he checked, there were 3 flights to choose from. Since I was in no rush, I took the cheapest one, through Christchurch for $100 fare difference plus $50 penalty. OK this is my bad so I accept my stupidity tax. Fernando told me if he made the change there would also be a $150 service fee so he showed me how to do it myself on my phone. I tried to make the change with the same credit card I had made the original booking on, but I got a generic error message. I tried my other card, same error. No fraud alerts came through for either card so something going wrong inside the Air NZ web site billing system. Fernando tried it through a web browser on his PC, same problem. I offered to pay cash but they can’t accept it at the desk. Fernando then found a way to get me to Auckland on a direct flight for a total cost of $290 so I decided to go for it, then write a letter to try to get the $290-$150=$140 back due to Air NZ’s computer problem. He swiped the original card and it went through first time. Further proof of Air NZ internal problem. Ugh. These computer things, get off my lawn!
I had to wait only about 1.5 hours for my flight to start boarding and had a very nice flight to Auckland.
Steve and family are out of town until tomorrow and couldn’t pick me up at the airport so I booked in with the SuperShuttle, door to door for $72 which is pretty reasonable as it’s about an hour’s drive. There were three other passengers including a couple who had just been down in the south island too. As we went through their neighbourhood to drop them off, I spotted a Tesla Model S with UBER lettering on the side, quite a coincidence as alert readers will know that there are only 6 Model Ss in the whole country. It turned out to be a friend of Steve and Dee’s, the Tesla community is very tight over there.
Arrived at Steve’s house, picked up some food nearby and crashed. I’ll spend one night here then fly to Sydney for one night, then through Tokyo to Vancouver to visit with my rellies and soak in some Canadian food, beer, Doritos and summer sunshine.
