Queenstown, South Island: A Royal Vacation in New Zealand

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

  

To many visitors, New Zealand is a land of slow-moving sheep, contented country folk and sleepy small towns. And that it is. New Zealand with a population of just over 4.2 million people had 2.4 visitors last year. What did they find?

"A country still small enough for people to care about each other," says the public affairs liaison in the Auckland Regional office of New Zealand Tourism. "We live in a pocket-sized world surrounded by an abundance of physical beauty, and we're geared from childhood to participate in sports and our natural resources."

There's little danger that those resources could be destroyed. Though it's small, the country is quite under-populated. Visitors today are particularly welcome because for many reasons travel is down. Unchanged, however is the glorious scenery -- and the outdoor activities in a semi-wilderness brought to a fine art by hundreds of tour operators.

You don't visit New Zealand for its architecture, museums or its shopping. You go to look at one of the most beautiful countries in the world, you go for adventure vacations-- indeed, New Zealand invented the bungy jump-- and you go especially if you rent a car and get out amongst the people, to discover a nation that's friendly and trusting almost to the point of being innocent, yet another example of a '50's America, a nation living life the way it used to be.

New Zealand's attractions include, in North Island, the thermal volcanic activities of Kotorua and the tranquility of Lake Taupo. In South Island it's the glacial beauty of the Southern Alps, with its crown, Mt.Cook, the peak on which Hillary trained for Everest. Competing too in the South is desolate Fiordland, the refined "more English than England" Christchurch and our favorite place, Queenstown, a spot with something for everyone.

Queenstown in South Island is really worth visiting. Tucked away below the 7,500 feet high mountain range of the Remarkables, it has all the character of an Alpine village in Switzerland. But it bustles with energy. Its 15,000 permanent residents seem to know they're working in the South Pacific's busiest -- and most successful -- tourist attraction, and their panache shows.

Queenstown, in a country that discourages law suits for injury, is a Mecca for adventure addicts. This is where Hamilton developed his jet-engined riverboats, creating flat bottomed craft that roar down rocky canyons at 35 mph, boats capable of 360 degree turns in their own length. And this is where Hackett expanded his bungy jump ideas using local 250 foot suspension bridges to let those seeking the ultimate high leap into space "with nothing but an elastic band tied round their ankles."

We started more leisurely with a lunch-hour cruise on Lake Wakatipu on the steamship TSS Earnslaw, the only people working hard on the coal-fired ship the stokers down below. The rest of our afternoon was equally lazy on the ex-London Transport double decker bus to Arrowtown, an authentic 1862 goldrush village. The Skyline Gondola Lift completed our idle first day, carrying us 1460 feet high in four minutes to the Skyline restaurant for a meal and later the 40 minute 70mm movie, Kiwi Magic, that showed the glories of New Zealand from the vantage of a helicopter.

Next morning with good weather we grabbed the chance to take Fiordland Travel's Milford Sound Fly'n'Sea trip on a Cessna 207 Stationair. We bounced over the Southern Alps of New Zealand's World Heritage Park, past glacier lakes that spilled endless waterfalls thundering down ice-clad cliffs. It took just moments to land and board the 300-passenger launch to explore for two hours what Rudyard Kipling called the "eighth wonder of the world." And now we'd traveled from Switzerland to Norway, to a remote place of beech forests, mountains, and dark deep seas.

We returned to Queenstown, to a town where entire streets were devoted to tour operators, each store stuffed with brochures extolling the comparative merits of, for example, the Shotover Triple Challenge, the Awesome Foursome, and the Queenstown Top 5, or offering gold-panning with Danes, rafting with Kiwi Discovery, going on safari with Nomad, or flying the fantastic with The Helicopter Line. Clearly none of those attractions needed booking before coming to Queenstown. The eighty different tour operators could keep any tourist occupied for a full year.

Next day, still not satiated, we flew on the Mount Cook Airline, to its home base in the meadow below that mountain where Hilary trained for Everest.

We got high in the snow the easy way -- by a skiplane -- that danced first around and over New Zealand's highest and most famous mountain then landed on the Tasman Glacier. We were silent on the flight back to Queenstown, each with our own thoughts, as if chatter would demean the sights we'd seen and those still below our wings. bIt all confirmed what we'd heard: You don't visit New Zealand for its architecture, museums or shopping but for its spectacular scenery, its action vacations and its old fashioned way of living life the way it used to be.

Climate: The seasons are reversed. Our summer is their winter. The North Island sub tropical, has no extremes; the South Island can be cold June through August. Clothing: Dress tends to be casual though men might want a jacket and tie for any special occasion.  Pack a sweater and include a raincoat or small umbrella for possible showers. Bring sensible walking shoes. Shopping: Clothing is overpriced. Best buys are sheepskins, wood carvings and local crafts. Documents: No visas are required for US or Canadian citizens but passports must be valid for three months beyond visit. No immunizations are necessary. Electricity: Though the current is 220 volts, all larger hotels have 110 volt outlets which take US electric shavers and curling irons. Getting There: Air New Zealand offers, by far, the best service to Auckland. Nonstop flights from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver have cut a journey of 20 hours to less than 14 hours. It also has Hawaii, Fiji and Tahiti stopover options and special deals on hotels. For further Information: New Zealand Tourism.