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Travel Journal: New Zealand
Day 1: Monday, February 25, 2002
Pretty drive from Christchurch to Queenstown
Today was our first day in New Zealand. We'd arrived the night before from Australia, flying through Aukland to Christchurch and were staying at the Belmont Motor Inn. We were woken up at 8am by a phone call from the Nationwide Rentals person, arranging to come pick us up at our hotel and bring us to the car rental place. When we checked out of the hotel, the clerk told us that they'd been booked solid until just that night so he suggested we might want to call ahead to places as we travelled around. (The guidebooks said by late Feb or March, it should be easy enough to find a place, but maybe this year was busier than others.)
The woman from Nationwide came by in a van to pick us up at 9am, stopping once to get some other people from Australia. (They had gotten in at 2am, so getting the early wakeup call was rougher on them.) We had gone with Nationwide because it was tons cheaper than Hertz, Avis, and other American firms, which is strange because those companies were much cheaper than the local ones in Australia. Who knows why? Everything seemed to be run manually by the people in the office — no computers, just paper and a system.  | Scenery southwest
of Christchurch |
The woman was very hands on, walking us through NZ driving rules and speeding tickets before giving us the keys. (You get tickets automatically via speed cameras if you go more than 10km/hr over the posted limit. I just don't like this system where you don't even know it if you get a ticket. No chance to adjust.) She also walked around car carefully noting all the dings and such so they'd know if we caused any damage.
We were headed toward Queenstown, about 600 km (360 miles) away. We decided to take the scenic route going south through the middle of the country. Initially it was flat with lots of sheep fields (far more than cows), and then it turned into patchwork hills. It was a gorgeous sunny day with puffy clouds, which was great.
 | Giant Jersey Shop
Geraldine |
Along the way, we stopped in a little town called Geraldine. The Rough Guide said it had a bunch of craft shops, so we figured we'd stroll around and check them out. We found only one or two places, but in one of them Walendo found some watercolors he really liked. He was tempted to buy one but they were expensive and it seemed a hassle to ship it home, so he didn't. I, on the other hand, found a great little shop selling wool sweaters called The Giant Jersey. The first thing you notice is a gigantic sweater on the wall, which they claim is the largest sweater in the world, and who knows, it could be. There were a bunch of sweaters I liked, and I learned that they made all the sweaters right there, and if they didn't have the size or colors you wanted, you could order them and they'd make them and customize them for your size. And they shipped back to the States for just NZ$8 (US$3.50). What a deal! So I ended up getting two sweaters. They were each about US$60, which isn't that cheap but is a good deal for such great quality. The women at the shop were very helpful.
 | | Knitting machine |
One of them mentioned that you could go in the back room to see them making the sweaters, so I did. There was a very nice man there who was using the knitting machine to make a custom sweater. I'd never seen such a machine before, so the guy gave me a personal demonstration, showing me how it worked and answering my questions. I knit sweaters by hand, so I was fascinated by how clever and efficient this machine was. The stitches were fed onto these little teeth, and you slide a sort of plate across the teeth to knit a row. It took about a second to do, about two minutes to knit a sleeve -- amazing. He showed me how they work in colors, which was very clever. There's a punchcard system to control the pattern of stitches and colors, and he had designed the pattern he was doing right then. He told me the knitting machine hadn't changed for hundreds of years, and even the big machines are doing essentially the same thing. I loved seeing how it worked.
 | Tapestry painted on
metal mosaic |
After the demo, he asked me if I wanted to see the artwork on the wall, so I agreed. From the other side of the room, it looked like a huge tapestry going all the way across the room in 5 strips. When you got up close, it wasn't yarn but painted metal. He'd been working on it for the past 20 years, and he showed how he'd done it. For the canvas, he'd broken off the tiny teeth from a metal wheel used in knitting machines and glued them onto squares of tape in a random pattern to create a mosaic-like background. Then he painted on that background. He had replicated a famous tapestry from English lore, and he showed me the book with the tapestry so I could compare his version to the picture. It was amazing. I gather tourists come to see this painting often, since when I'd first walked in, he thought that's what I was there for. Quite an experience walking into that little shop.
 | Hi-tech bathroom
in Geraldine, NZ |
Before we left town, we went to the public bathrooms, which were something out of Star Trek. It was a metal unit, and you pressed a button to open the doors. Inside, you press a button to release toilet paper, and when you're done, the sink has three phases to it — one to release soap, the next to dispense water (which flushes the toilet) and one to air dry your hands. You press another button to open the door and when you leave, it auto-cleans itself. How odd to find in a little town in the middle of New Zealand.
Before we left town, we decided to call ahead to book a hotel in Queenstown so we wouldn't have to rush to get there incase everything was booked. We chose a hotel from a pamphlet we'd picked up at the visitor's center in town. It was more expensive than we usually pay (NZ$160 plus GST, or US$80 plus tax.) It seemed worth it to not have to hurry.
 | | Fields with sheep |
After Geraldine, the scenery was especially beautiful. Lots of sheep with patchwork hills and Alps in background. We stopped a few places to take pictures, probably not enough. (It's always a balance to take advantage of the beautiful senery but you can't stop everywhere and you do need to make progress.) All the roads are two-lane roads but they're relatively uncrowded, so we could usually move along at at least 100km/hr except when we got stuck behind a truck going up a winding hill. Still, it was usually pretty easy to pass. The driving was generally quite enjoyable. We went through Fairlie, then Lake Tekapo (very pretty turquoise color, which you don't usually see in a lake), then Twizel.
 | | Sheep on a hill |
After about Twizel, the scenery got pretty uninteresting. The hills became yellowish and brown, with just a few tufts of grass on them. This went on for long time, so it just became driving to get to Queenstown (stopping once in Cromwell for gas). Near Cromwell, we played game where we each had to say something we saw on the road, but we couldn't repeat anything. It was easy for a while, then it got harder, so we got more creative (and sillier) about what we named. It was a silly game, but we do silly things like that a lot. Walendo also practiced his sheep immitation.
 | Downstairs of
Quality Resort suite |  | | Quality Resort |
Once we got close to Queenstown, we drove through a canyon with a bridge that they bungee jump off of. This was the main bridge they use for bungee jumping, but Walendo had bungee jumped off a higher bridge near Queenstown 11 years ago, so he scoffed at the one we passed as child's play. Finally we got to Queenstown and found our hotel, the Quality Resort. Okay, so we'd paid more but it was amazing what we got for that. We were on the top floor, and not only did it have a great view of the lake, but it had three rooms on two levels. It was a real suite, more like a condo. There was one large room on the lower level with a kitchen, living room, and a big deck, and then upstairs there was a main bedroom, a second bedroom, and two bathrooms. Wow. It's a shame we were just using it as a stopping place along the way. They had guest laundry too, so we took advantage of that later that evening.
 | | Queenstown, NZ |
First we walked 10 minutes into town and Walendo barely recognized the place from when he'd been here in 1991. He asked some people and found that they'd built all sorts of buildings and hotels in recent years, most of them high end. It started to depress him after a while that it was so different. We stopped in a travel booking shop and picked up some brochures. The plan had been for me to go horseback riding tomorrow while Walendo relaxed around Queenstown, but I'd called two places that morning and they both were just 1.5 hours long, mostly walking with just a little trotting or cantering, so I wasn't sure it was worth it. Maybe it would be better to do an all-day event. We found a flyer for kayaking in Milford Sound, which sounded great. They had a twilight kayak, so we decided to call tomorrow morning to see if we could get on that.
 | Shops along harbor
Queenstown, NZ |
We walked around town looking for a restaurant and chose a place called Thai Siam. It was small, so we had to wait a while. There was no list, you just told them you wanted a table and the floor manager kept track of the line in his head, calling us to our table when it was ready, about 25 minutes later. The wait was worth it — the food was really good, very fresh and not greasy. We also liked the music that was playing, so we asked what it was. The floor manager wrote it down for us so we'd remember it. It was called Vertigo by Groove Armada. We'll have to look for it.
After dinner, I got my ice cream, then we walked back to the hotel. We did laundry downstairs in the hotel. When I got there, there were some washed clothes sitting in the two washers, so I moved them out and put mine in, which I hoped was okay. Later, when I came down to move mine along, I met the couple. They were a retired couple from New Jersey. They seemed nice and it was interesting to compare notes. They're here for 5 weeks as part of elder hostel program where have educational talks and such. Geez, I can't wait to retire!
We also uploaded the pictures from the digital camera to my laptop and looked at them, which was great fun. It's great seeing your pictures as you go. With all the chores, we didn't get to bed till late. Tomorrow we plan to call to see if we can get on the Milford sound kayak and we plan to book some hotels for the next few days.
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