Adventures in Queenstown

Queenstown, not much to do on a rainy day, but when the sun’s out, the guns are out. And by guns, I mean, Kate and I had a lot of fun.

After an AMAZING week in Wanaka, filled with organic farming, tramping, and good company, our most awesomest hosts ever drove us to Queenstown, cause they rock! Along the way we stopped in Arrowtown, where we were supposed to go for a hike. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, I was the only one who still wanted to hike… so… Instead we went to a bakery, and then did a little exploring of this historic gold mining village.

Arrowtown is famous for Chinese Village. I bet you can figure out who lived there, Chinese gold miners. Their huts were amazing. Small, one room shelters built nestled into the protective rock wall.

From Arrowtown we entered Queenstown. Kate and I planned to go for a Lord of the Rings Horse Trek and maybe a bungee jump or canyon swing. As we arrived in town, a cold rain started coming down, so it was definitely a good thing that we had skipped the tramp. No fun tramping in a cold rain if you don’t have to. Anyway, we got to town and booked our horse trek ; then we found a place to sleep (We have priorities!).

At 8:15 am Tuesday morning we eagerly walked down to meet our ride to Glenorchy and Paradise. It was raining, and the forecast was for rain, so we wore rain jackets. Me, I had was optimistic, and knowing Glenorchy is an hour from Queenstown, I brought sunglasses, just in case it was sunny there. Apparently, the opposite was true. At 8:30 the lady from the stables gave us the bad news. The weather was far far worse out there, gale force winds and lots of rain, so the trip was off. Luckily, we hadn’t booked a bus yet, so we just rescheduled for Wednesday. So we stayed an extra day in Queenstown, of course, we now have a max of one day at Arthur’s Pass, which means that tent I’ve been carrying around for the last 2 ½ months, probably will never see the light of day. Sad.

So we tried to figure out what to do in Q-town on a rainy day. There isn’t much. It’s real attraction is that it’s the gateway to a lot of really really really fun things, like horse treks, and Milford Sounds tours, kiwi tours, lots of 4WD tours, jet boating, white water rafting… you get the idea. So, I did what any girl in my position would do. I signed up to do the canyon swing, the following afternoon. (Who wants to plummet to their almost certain death on a rainy day?)
Which still left Kate and I with the dilemma, what to do with our rainy day? We got breakfast at the bakery, then took a nap. A logical thing to do, given what we had planned for the following day. Oh, and Kate made fun of me, because I revealed that I had grabbed sunglasses, “Hope springs eternal…” she’s mocked me for that a lot on this trip… After our nap, we hit the theatres to see Ghost Town, which was actually a good movie. I recommend it. Not your traditional romantic comedy.

Soo… the real stuff! WEDNESDAY! Kate and I woke up to a slightly chilly, but SUNNY!! morning. Once again we made our way into town to catch our ride, and this time, we actually got in the van! We drove along the lake (featured in LOTR) to reach the Dart Stables. Along the way, I noticed that the mountains had some fresh powder on them. While we got rain, they got snow, is that fair? We also stopped at a view point, where our driver pointed out the Battle of Helms Deep. Unfortunately, I only just saw the movies and am not a geek, and wasn’t really sure where he was pointing since he was standing behind me. But! I have officially seen where the Battle of Helms Deep was shot… take that Meredith!

Blah blah blah, we drove into Paradise (privately own land trust, yay conservation!) where we met our horses. I got the small one, Chester. He happened to have a Napoleon Complex. Little man = alpha horse. He likes the front and likes to eat. He was not happy until we had picked off the other horses to lead the pack… then he paid attention to what I told him to do… at least a little.

So things we saw:
1. Lothlorien – place where Frodo tries to give the ring to the Elf and she gets all evil look and then he looks in the well and realizes how horrible life will be if he doesn’t destroy the ring.
This place looks nothing like the movie. Primary school kids painted leaves and Peter Jackson had people pin them to the trees to make it look like autumn (it was shot in an evergreen forest). Plus, they may have brought some trees of their own.
2. Isengard – really pretty, and the river that floods it. The river, not at all what it looks like in the movie, it’s a braided river, not a wide flowing mass. And, there is no giant tower! That was really just a 6 foot model that was added to the scene using computers (Sorry to ruin it for you…) But it was really ridiculously pretty and there are some very distinctive mountains in the scene!
3. Amon Hen (Kate spelled it for me… we’re not sure) – Boromir Dies! (I actually recognized this one!). So all those hundreds of orcs rushing over that hill… 30 C day (really hot ..86?), wetsuit for muscles, plus armor, including a helmet that prevents you from seeing and hearing well. Oh, and those weren’t 100s of extras, that was the Queenstown rugby team, running down the hill, then off camera to run back up it, then down it again looking fierce. Since they couldn’t really see where they were going, sometimes they tripped on trees… which means the director yelled cut, and they had to run up and down the hill all over again. The lucky ones were slain… That day had some major casualties, 2 with heat stroke, 2 (or more) with twisted ankles, plus, 1 concussion (Camera on a zip-line hit the guy as he was running down the hill). I’ll take bleachers over that work out any day.
4. Fangorn Forest: The forest the orcs are cutting down. They didn’t really cut down the forest, but rather they imported tree stumps (Then took them out again… don’t worry, everything was left as they found it).
5. OSCAR: Movie Star! This horse was in the movie for that huge battle scene. Technically, he was in it 10 times, because they only had 250 horses but used computers to make 2500. He also saved the day in Prince Caspian – if it wasn’t for him, all of the other horses wouldn’t have run through the river. Of course, as the fearless leader, he didn’t make the actual scene.

So that was our morning…

After lunch, we had the canyon swing. For this, I (somewhat) voluntarily jumped from a platform 109 m above a river, flowing through a canyon with hard rock walls. The first “Swing” I did was the pin drop. You look over the edge, and you jump. It’s actually pretty scary. But I did jump myself! Although, I took about 2 minutes after stepping to the edge to convince myself to do it. When you first jump, it’s not scary. It gets scary when you’re falling for about 5 seconds and you haven’t landed on something soft and you haven’t felt the rope tighten. Oh, and flipping upside down unexpectedly didn’t help. But it was wicked fun.

My second jump involved lawn furniture. I sat on three plastic chairs (apparently one just isn’t enough) and then you’re supposed to lean back until you just fall over the edge. Well, they kind of hold you too make sure you don’t lean back to fast and just swing under the platform. Of course, in my case, they weren’t so much holding me as pushing me. The pin drop had a rating of 6 underwear (meaning as scary as it gets), the Chair of Death only had a rating of 3 underwear. Whoever made that rating system, was an idiot. The Chair of Death deserves 10 underwear, as I believe my minute of screaming “NO NO NO NO NO NO” the first time they tried to send me over proved. But they successfully pushed me on the second attempt, and I screamed, loudly, much to the amusement of the rafters below. Kate claims that they were laughing at me.

I got the videos so I can always remember how absolutely ridiculously I behaved when faced with falling from a really high platform (So far I’ve been too embarrassed to watch them with sound…)

I guess that’s it. Kate and I took the bus to Franz Joseph today and we walk on the glacier tomorrow! Yay!