The Beginning - Queenstown

For some time I wanted to do the Otago Central Rail Trail and when my friend Bev from Sydney said she would like to do it I jumped at the chance.  A few months later after a little bit of planning, some advice on clothing from Garry such as; get the bike pants and a comfort seat to make it easier on your, and gloves so that when you come off your hands have some protection.  I took his advice even though I thought that my shape was not quite up to spandex.  


We booked with Trail Journeys, who arranged accomodation, provided bikes and took our 10kg bags from place to place.  With all that in place I was ready to go on the 13th of March.

So it was on Tuesday morning the 13th that I was up at 6am to get ready for the trip south.  Bev was staying with a friend around the corner and they picked me  up and took me to the airport.  It was a bit wet and windy but as we were heading south that did not matter.  After breakfast in the Koru Club we flew to Christchurch.  There was no view as there was lots of cloud obscuring the views with only the high peaks of the Kaikouras visible above the cloud.  We had an hour and a half stopover in Christchurch. 

It is a couple of years since I flew through Christchurch and the new terminal is still not completed clearly a victim of the earthquake.  To get from the Koru Lounge to our plane involved a long hike and as a result of our tardiness we were the last people on it. 

As we flew toward Queenstown the skies cleared and we had a stunning view of Mt Cook/Aorangi, the Mackenzie Basin then it was Lakes Hawea and Wanaka before we descended into Queenstown. 

Queenstown - the beginning

The landscapes are stunning and the mountains seemed almost etched into the sky so clear was the air.  On an impulse we decided to rent a car.  We tried the really cheap places, but  they were not very helpful, in fact their service was cheap like their cars.  Avis offered a car for $160 for the day which was too much, so we went  next door to Europcar and the guy there was most helpful and had found us a car for $85.  It was a Hyundai i30.  After 5 minutes of driving I decided that while it was quite a nice car to drive but was not as good as the Golf. 

Lunchtime at Gibbston

The car was to enable us to go to a few wineries and to have a quick look around the Queenstown area.  We headed down the Gibbston Valley first stopping at the Bungy jump over the Kawarau River.  After watching brave thrill seekers bungy jump, we had a late lunch at Gibbston Valley Wines before heading to Cromwell and a visit to Carrick Wines where a friend’s nephew works. 

Francis was a very nice host and took Bev and I for a walk through the vineyard telling us where the various wines came from, their organic conversion and where they were pulling out the vines to replace with other grape varieties.  They had recently become Biogrow certified.  Francis explained the virtues of being organic and how good it was from a workers point of view as they were not covered in various chemicals.  The wines were rather nice especially the Pinot Noir. 

Our next stop was Felton Road wines where I got to taste some of the wines I had bought.  My favourite was the Riesling.  The woman who was providing the tasting was really passionate abut the wines and had even been doing some wine education classes so was really informative about the wines. 

A visit to Arrowtown capped off a rather busy day.  After checking into the hotel we wandered down to the town centre where we got a table at the Botswana Butchery.  It is a very nice restaurant that has its focus on meat.  I think the owner was from Botswana.  I had hare which was very good although it arrived  at only a warm temperature.  The hare was done two ways, one as a loin and the other as part of a pie.  It was very nice.  We finished off by sharing one of the better crème brulee's that I have had.