Queenstown and Piopiotahi/Milford Sound

On the way to Queenstown, on a cold, clear morning, we stopped firstly at the Cromwell Heritage Precinct, a bunch of old buildings relocated to higher ground when Lake Dunstan was created in 1992.

From there we popped into historic Arrowtown, a gold mining town dating from 1862.

The remains of the town’s Chinese settlement were fascinating, as was the historic Main Street of the town, where the businesses are now employed extracting gold from the wallets of the tourists.

Queenstown itself more than lived up to its hype, although the weather was a little unkind to us. We enjoyed walking down the incredibly steep hill (not so much walking up, though!) from our accommodation to the township, and walking past the forty-five-minute-plus queues at Fergburger to get to the waterfront.

Being too old, too sensible and too tight-arsed for the adventure activities, we enjoyed the walk out around Queenstown Gardens, a cruise on Lake Wakatipu and a drive up to the village of Glenorchy in pouring rain.

From there, via a couple of nights overlooking the picture-postcard lake at Te Anau, we made our way to Milford Sound for an overnight cruise.

The weather by this time was a bit dreadful, very cold and windy and with a major rain event forecast. In fact, the Milford Road was forecast to close the day we drove in, leaving us to hope it would be reopened in time for our exit the following day.

As it turned out, though, we were a bit lucky. Quite a few of the 6,800 annual millimetres fell whilst we were driving in but once we set sail from Milford Harbour the rain stopped and we had a couple of wonderful hours cruising up close to the waterfalls, some permanent and hundreds of others just random rivulets cascading down the cliffs.

It was a wonderful experience to wake up in the morning, pull the curtains aside and see the light slowly bringing into focus the calm water and the imposing cliffs rising on all sides.

The following morning was clearer still, as we sailed out through the entrance to the sound for a brief sojourn in the Tasman Sea. That entrance is hard to spot from the ocean, so much so that even noted apprentice grocer James Cook missed it as he sailed past.

Leaving Milford, we were third in the queue when the road was reopened, too, so our luck held out to the end. What a great experience!Les mer