After only two hours of driving we arrived in Queenstown and all prejudice we had were immediately approved. It’s an incredible beautiful spot directly at Lake Wakatipu, but unfortunately full of tourists. Full is even slightly understated as 2 million tourists push through the city with only 19,000 citizens every year (5,500 per day). 65% of them are international who mainly arrive at the second and last international airport on the south island besides Christchurch. We directly experienced that, since the road from the south crosses the airport and all traffic is led through a miniature roundabout which obviously caused a traffic hazard of some kilometres.
Slightly deterred about all the tourists we were quite happy that we wouldn’t live in Queenstown itself but in Arrowtown which is around 15km north. As Zsuzsi and Adam raved about our “guest mother”, we were very curious about her and our stay. The first one who welcomed us was Buddy the small Scottish terrier and later Gaye (around 70 years old) who prepared yummy carrot cake for us and a delicious dinner (Mousaka). Even though we already experienced the kindness of Kiwis we were almost out of words…
What followed the next day was even better. Gaye took us with her to the market, where she sells her self-made (and absolutely delicious) chutneys, marmalades, jams, oils, weeds etc. and we helped her setting up the table. She started with this little business after she became pensioner and the thing kind of exploded. She had that much success, that she even sells 80l of chutney to the Hilton Hotel regularly. Of course this is too much work for one single lady and that’s why she searches helpers through HelpX in order to cut the ingredients. That was our main job for our time with her, cutting 10kg of onions and beetroot. Since Gaye didn’t have a fixed schedule, we wanted to do our work on a rainy day. During the market Gaye bought us German bred and sausages, Sauerkraut and Spaetzle and invited us for lunch for a South American sandwich. Just a perfect start for our stay. She told us she wants her visitors to feel like home (in our case Germany) which was pretty easy for us with such a lovely host.
During the market we also drove to the tourist information together with Buddy and made a plan for the next 4 days. We wanted to “climb” the mountain Ben Lomond and also try to find some movie location of “The Lord of the Rings”. As the weather was supposed to be good the next day, we directly did Ben Lomond. The picture with the altitude difference of the track says everything about it. We walked 1400m uphill just to walk them down again. Quite exhausting but rewarded with an awesome 360° view over the other mountains and Lake Wakatipu and it was a good training for our planned muti-day hikes anyway. On the way downhill we made a little detour to the well-known Gondola which brings visitors from 350m to 600m altitude. We saved the money for the journey and either walked down the way. The next day was bad weather so we did all the cutting work we already mentioned and a visit of Arrowtown in the evening. This small village was built during the time of the gold rush and still has the rumour that you might be able to find gold there, which of course brings a lot of tourists into the town who try their luck!
Our last day was filled out with a search for two movie locations of the „The Lord of the Rings”. The first one was the Fangorn forest (which is apparently exactly what it is, a forest…) and Isengard. The second one is quite easy to recognize, even though we couldn’t access the actual location which is on private land. In fact the river which goes from Glenorchy westwards looks like that at a lot of spots! We also did a small part of the Routeburn Track, one of the Great Walks, which is a connection to Milford Sound which is only 100km airway away from Queenstown over the Alps, but you need a 5 hour drive around them. In that case the walk is quite interesting and it’s supposed to be one of the nicest in NZ anyway, why it definitely gets on the TO DO list for the next visit.
And then again, the last day came and as Gaye had a Bridge tournament we took Buddy with us in our room who slept UNDER our blanket and cuddled with us. The next day, we drove a bit back south in order to visit Milford Sound….