Christchurch and the Southern Alps

It’s pretty much undeniable that this phase of the trip is far more photogenic than the previous stops. I landed in Christchurch on the sixth of January, and spent three days there, two of which I was working remotely. I then drove down to a farmstay a bit south of Twizel, and then the next day came into Queenstown.
 

Christchurch had a massive earthquake in 2011, from which major pieces of damage are still visible. The devastation was such that it dropped the city from second-largest to third-largest city in New Zealand, as people moved out of uninhabitable homes. Eight years later, I am surprised at how much still remains to be worked on.
It’s called the ‘Garden City’ with the Avon River and the Botanical Gardens providing nice greenery around the city. That said, I wouldn’t say that it is more garden-y than many other cities of the New World. It actually reminded me a bit of Denmark or Iceland, with low metal-siding buildings in cheerful colors, and nice wide-open streets. There were tourists, but hardly in the massed crowds frequent in major tourist cities. There really isn’t that much to do in town, and that made it a great place to relax.
The hostel there -Kiwi Basecamp- was excellent, small, well-setup, and friendly. I met quite a number of interesting people: Susan, a local who was suing her past company over a complaint, and energetic and full of conversation. Jacob, a travel-worn Brit. Laura, a well-traveled Danish country girl. And lots of Germans, because they are by far the majority here, many on working holiday gap years.
Lacking over-priced attractions to spend my money on, I spent it all on over-priced food. In particular, there is a dessert cafe on Regent’s Street called Rollins Cafe which was terrific. Regent’s Street is the small town version of a fancy high-street shopping district. The quaint old-school tram runs casually down the middle of the elegant street, and it’s really quite wonderful. Well, the cafe’s mascot of a giant plastic gorilla on a bench outside is a bit out of place.

That said, the cafe in question is evil, as they require $20 minimum for a credit card purchase, forcing you to buy lots of desserts to have with your tea. They’re chocolate covered peanut butter cookie dough thing was unique, and good, and their brownie was incredible. I went there twice, such a burden.

Perhaps the most wonderful thing I saw in Christchurch was a playground… Yes, a playground, an amazing one which even I was forced to play on. I have no idea how all the adults watching their kids resisted the temptation to join in. It had: a long (albeit slowish) zipline, a rope jungle-gym, a tower of slides and bridges, a climbing hill with slide, a water park with adjustable dams, water wheels, and other engineering toys, and, in general all sorts of wonderful spinning and climbing devices.
But alas, my time here, much of it spent in the wonderful library, was too short, and I was soon picking up a rental car to head south. I find it amusing that renting an economy car is cheaper than renting a mid-level bike. The left-hand side road stuff was really not that bad, perhaps in part because I had already been biking on the roads for a few days in Australia. The roads are tiny here, everywhere, and never have a shoulder, but otherwise are great.
Heading to Mt Sunday through the Canterbury countryside was wonderful. In particular, there are huge hedges throughout the countryside, made of trees 10 or more meters high -big enough they had caught my eye as I flew into land at Christchurch airport. Once the farmlands started to thin, things really came to be properly New Zealand as I expected. I loved the view so much driving that I even held out my expensive DSLR out the window over the car to take photos: it takes remarkably good photos this way, although the risk is probably not recommended.

Mt Sunday was, having used up my other adjectives of wonder, incredible. Driving down the long gravel roads to it, the Southern Alps in the distance opened to reveal a broad, flat river plain out of which Mt Sunday, aka Edoras, rose a small but very distinct hill amidst the plains. The wind was strong, the sun was strong, and it as perfect. Ornate grasses, stunningly turquoise waters across countless streams, and the ragged, snow-capped mountains beyond.

 
Only thing was, I had a long day of more driving planned ahead, so I rather ran up the hill, and back, not lingering long, to give myself plenty of time for photo taking along the way. There were probably some ten tourists across the site -a perfect number to give a friendly, but still isolated air. Luckily, I just beat the arrival of the day’s tour group (albeit only another 10 or so people), who posed with hideously fake-looking swords and cheesy costumes. Overall, the hill was smaller than I expected (perhaps the gigantic mountains in the background messed with my sense of scale), but far, far more beautiful. True, I got lucky and it was sunny, still, it’s down as my favorite site to date on my trip.
Turns out, Google for once had overestimated travel time, and I spent the rest of they day ahead of schedule. It had expected me to average only 20 kmh on the gravel roads to Edoras, while I, safe with zero-excess insurance on my rental, was free to fly along at 60 kmh. The speed limit for part of that way was actually 100 kmh, but you’d have to have a pretty sturdy vehicle to do that -the gravel sometimes pooled up in loose piles on the corners.
Moving on, I drove a scenic highway to Lake Tekapo, a famous turquoise blue lake with Mt Cook in the background. I managed to a find a few lupines still in bloom, and snap some pictures, but in a land filled with stunning mountains and endless perfectly-blue waters, it wasn’t really that special.

Twizel welcomed me for an early supper – a good burger, plus a stop at a supermarket for cookies. Near this friendly town, just a few km, was the Fields of Pelennor filming location. I ran over to take a look, and was greeted by a wide, flat field, with a small hill ridge and a greater mountain range behind. I first doubted my identification of the site, but streaming movie clips on my phone, confirmed it was indeed the place. It was not a beautiful place in itself, but had a definite power with the huge field, and huge mountains, beyond. Definitely the place to go if you wanted to organize thousands of people and horses into a coherent movie fight scene without needing to CGI away too many traces of the modern world.
That night’s farmstay was an interesting place, with a small mix of camping sites, hostel dorms, and cabins for rent. I was the only hostel guest there that night, so scored a defacto private cabin at half the cost. I chased some sheep – they seem determined to be afraid of me no matter where I go in this country and went to an early bedtime… and then woke up again at 12:30 am so I could go out and see the stars. My contacts were a bit blurry from having been in while sleeping, and it was hard to take good photos, but still worth the loss of sleep, in one of the darkest places of the world: a southern hemisphere look on the Milky Way.

Ugh, 6 am wake up. I was the first out of bed at this place, and only one other person was up by the time I got on the road at 7 am. I usually try to be the last one up, but I had to get to Queenstown and return my rental car by 10 am, so off I went… I did get some nice sunrise photos out of it. Along the way, I managed to pick up two German hitchhikers, who chatted amicably with me, as I made at least one wrong turn, and when we stopped to see the Kawarau Gorge, the filming sight of LOTR Anduin River scenes.
In town, I rented a decent mountain bike and headed off into the beautiful mountainous high country. It was nice, until my mountain bike trails and AWD roads turned into a nasty little track.

I flew off a little cliff into a thistle patch, scrambled up brutally steep hillsides lugging my bike behind, and then cursing and beating my way, slipping endlessly on the rocks in my road shoes, took over an hour to cover some 5K of the trail. My right foot’s been having problems for a year or so now whenever it is rotated -some poorly healed fracture I believe, and it caused serious pain here. I was told that section of trail was challenging but rideable, by a fellow who was a serious downhiller as it turned out, not a roadie like me. Queenstown is the ‘Adventure Capital of the World’ and I found my adventure, albeit in a bit rougher way than I was hoping. I’ll try to stick to gravel roads in the future.
Which leaves me up to the present day, which I am taking off, sitting in a chocolate shop/cafe and recovering. I’ve got a bus to Dunedin at 4:30 pm, with more to come!