I don’t like Queenstown. There. I said it.
It may be an unpopular opinion but it’s one that I’ll stand behind. It’s too crowded, the traffic is too constant and the lack of car parking spaces makes visiting the town a nightmare. Maybe, for me, Queenstown just wasn’t it and that’s okay, enough other people seem to love it. If you know me at all you might wonder why we went to a hectic cramped adventure-sports-centric tourist town in the first place, and we didn’t really, we just needed to battle through the traffic to the wilderness on the other side.
Our real destination was Glenorchy, the world famous backdrop to many LOTR scenes, home to a quaint touristy town and where we’d be going on a small horse trek to celebrate my 30th birthday. I chose High country horses for a few reasons, it had beginner friendly rides - which meant Ben could join in - and their reviews were mainly positive.
The day we booked for wasn’t great, a slate grey sky with occasional misty showers, the impressive backdrop of the Humboldt mountain range that would have made the hack special was shielded by low hanging clouds. I did enjoy plodding through the glacial rivers while our guide told us about the local fauna and flora, but it didn’t have the wow factor I thought riding through NZ would bring. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice and I would like to go on some more hacks in the future, but it was quite far out of our way for just nice. It was nothing against High country horses, their service was professional, the horses were in great condition the day itself was just lack lustre. Perhaps the best thing to come from it was that Ben enjoyed himself, so I’m hopeful I can drag him on more horse based adventures in the future.
While we were in the area we decided to partake in some film based tourism. Glenorchy has its fair share of LOTR filming locations, but some-how all of them required a tad too much imagination for me recognise them… despite being told exactly what they were supposed to be. First we visited the lookout point to Isengard, apparently, followed by a rather bumpy drive down the “road to paradise” where we found Lothlórien - the golden forest of the elves. No forest looks magical under grey skies and despite wandering past some true LOTR fans in elven regalia having a mock battle photoshoot, it didn’t scream middle earth to me. On a side note, two of our friends from the hop harvest don’t seem to suffer from the lack of imagination that we do and I highly recommend checking out their instagram for their amusing videos visiting them.
We had initially planned on camping in Paradise; we’d got ourselves settled at the diamond lake free camping area when something strange happened, we got invaded by cows. I know that sounds weird, but what else could I call it when one moment we were peacefully looking out over the beautiful scenery, and the next surrounded by a loose herd of cows that seemed intent on nibbling the van! We tried to ignore them, which didn’t really achieve anything, then we tried to herd them into a nearby field, which worked for about thirty minutes before they started trickling back out - no gates to be found. Despite quite liking cows I didn’t think I’d get a good night sleep with them eating the windshield wipers, so we conceded defeat and let the cows have the camping area.
We bumped and rattled our way back down the long road to paradise and headed to Twelve mile delta, a confusing warren of a campsite just outside of Queenstown. It was fine as far as D.O.C sites go, the toilets were clean, the sites private enough and nearby lake was beautiful but without the pass it would have been expensive at fifteen dollars each.
The next day we attempted to visit Queenstown, but after a frustrating forty minutes of driving round small, awkward, fully occupied carparks interspersed with sitting in traffic jams, we gave up. There was a twenty dollar carpark we could have gone too but that seemed like too steep a price to pay to mooch around a town we just wasn’t that bothered by. Perhaps exploring would have changed our minds about the place but we’ll just have to live with never knowing. Bored with it all we drove straight through and hit the road, heading down state highway 6, winding our way along Lake Wakatipu, past half way bay and the devils staircase for the third and final time leaving Queenstown far behind us.
We decided to stop at Lumsden, we knew it had all the facilities we’d need and most importantly it had good signal for us to plan out where we’d be going next. Apart from a few activities and general direction we don’t tend to plan more that a week in advance. This works for the most part, allowing for spontaneity but occasionally we don’t know which way to go. With time on our side we chose the long route, trading a quick journey down to bluff for a detour along highway 96 just to see what was there.
We was heading towards Clifden Caves when tragedy struck, okay, maybe not tragedy, maybe in reality we were only grazed by mild inconvenience but that hardly sounds dramatic enough. The wind had picked up while we were happily trundling along and unmoored part of the windscreen weathering, leaving it wildly flapping off to the side in an annoying and ridiculous way. Luckily for us - after our own bodge job of trying to fix it failed - a windscreen repair shop along our route in Winton could happily fix it but unluckily not until the next day. With that settled we headed to Winton proper to explore the town.
First we followed the underwhelming heritage trail that consisted of fancy old houses that were mostly hidden behind privacy hedges and a seemingly random historic patch of grass. Then we explored the op shops, finding that winton didn't really have any second hand goods that we were interested in. Exploration done, we headed off to the local golf course that would let us use the facilities and camp in their carpark for the reasonable sum of twenty dollars. The next morning, we headed back to the glass place where our van was quickly mended so we could get back on the road.
Clifden caves turned out to be a more serious venture that we’d thought. One and a half hours minimum of crawling and squeezing through the cave complex, sidling along narrow ledges and passing through freezing cold pools. As we had one torch between us, no provisions and no one knew we were there, I decided that perhaps it wasn’t the best of ideas. It wasn’t that I was scared, it was that I was terrified, the thought of our torch running out and as potentially getting lost down there in one of the many unmarked routes was too much. We ventured the 5 minutes from entry A to B and that was enough for me.
Clifden suspension bridge was slightly more my speed. Built in the late 1900’s, the bridge spanning the Waiau river was a marvel of engineering, boasting the title of the longest suspension bridge in New Zealand. Beautiful river views. Open air above our heads. Delightful.
To cap off our sedate adventuring of Highway 96 we headed to Monkey island free-camping site, where we spent a wonderful three days relaxing on the beautiful beach, fishing, walking down to the nearby gemstone beach and clambering over Monkey Island itself.
So maybe Queenstown wasn't for us, but we definitely found some places that were.
Trip date : May 2023
Keep on trucking 👀
The LOTR scenes were bound to disappoint so best kept fresh in the imagination. I'm off to check out your mates instagram now too! Keep them coming Georgia, I love the pics and details so much x