queenstown Archives | Antidotes for Chimps

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Gone are the days of our youth when litres of alcohol could be drunk with little consequence. These days, a hangover feels like having your stomach replaced with an over-jealous washing machine, and a head that’s being jabbed by a malicious leprechaun. Despite this, we were going out on the town, and we were going to get properly fucked.

We skipped out of the hotel entrance like a couple of excited children, ready to guzzle all of the booze available to us. We hopped from bar to bar, consuming red wine, golden beer, blackened Guinness and rainbow cocktails, with a good measure of cod and potato half way, for that extra fishy boost. At one bar, while Em was in the bathroom, a fellow drinker assumed that I was alone and was kind enough to ask me to join them, such is the friendly comradeship of Queenstown tourists. In another bar, the niceness was relinquished by a gaggle of petulant silver-haired Americans, who felt it necessary to state in no uncertain terms how terrible the service was in this very casual Irish pub. Personally, I’d rather an honest smile than a fake one.

Drunk in Queenstown

After a few hours of wayward drinking and plodding, we reached our final destination – a club that promised good underground house music. Unfortunately, the excessive alcohol had broken my weary, aged limbs, and I could only dance for half an hour before whining incessantly about going home. No amount of red bull or thumping kick drums could rejuvenate me. We left and purchased some mightily delicious venison puff-pastry pies, gobbling them with glee as we swayed our way back to the hotel.

The hangover was every bit as disgusting as anticipated, so not much was achieved that day. We caught up with my old pal from Ibiza over dinner, who like everyone else my age except me, has settled down into a family life, complete with adorable smiley toddler.

The next morning we undertook our one and only thrill activity of the trip – the famous Shotover Jet. The driver of our boat was an unbelievably handsome bastard; if I’d have thought it possible to blindfold Em for the duration, I would have. He sped down the Shotover river like a bat out of hell, aiming the gunfire red boat as close as physically possible to the sharp canyon rocks without actually hitting them. He described the boat itself as a giant jetski, which sucks water and then savagely spits it out in order to create massive, fear-inducing amounts of thrust. The result was superb fun.

Our next destination was Te Anau, a town that exists purely for the spectacular nearby Milford Sound – the unofficial eighth wonder of the world, which is essentially a gigantic sea-filled fiord carved out by glaciers. It took a couple of hours to get there, with the blasted rain returning once more to spite us. Te Anau also sat on a beautiful far-reaching lake, and I was beginning to wonder whether that was a requirement for a New Zealand settlement. The town was fairly large and seemed to consist mostly of lodges, hostels and hotels. We stayed in a modest hostel because the prices were high due to the remoteness of the town, forking out $120AUD per night for what was basically a crappy, worn-out room. The shower curtain was the kind that wanted to get up close and personal whenever you turned the water on; it wrapped its slimy fabric around my calf more than a few times. The bed was comfortable, at least.

Our Milford Sound boat trip was the following day, a two-hour coach trip from Te Anau. The driver made a pleasing stop at a hidden lake along the way, which on sunnier days acts as a mirror, reflecting the impeccable surroundings. It was splendid regardless.

Mirror Lakes – Te Anau to Milford Sound

The closer we got to our destination, the more the rain intensified, and as we descended into the fiord we could see nothing aside from blanket fog. No eighth wonder of the world for you today! Haha!

Thankfully, after the boat departed and bobbed closer to the mammoth mountains, they became much clearer. The colossal rock faces were blackened by the steady rain, which caused tens of individual waterfalls to cascade down them, of differing size and intensity. The tails of some smaller waterfalls were being blown in another direction entirely by the wind, creating a delicate fairy-dust mist that clung to our jackets when we braved the top deck.

Milford Sound

As we approached the exit of the fiord, the fog broke in the distance, revealing a delightful water-valley of sloping sierras. Milford Sound was undoubtedly impressive, despite the weather. The captain noted that this was a typical sodden day for them, with the area receiving a jaw-dropping nine metres of rain per year.

Milford Sound

We returned to our lifeless hostel a few hours later, and prepared ourselves for our final two days in New Zealand.

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Queenstown is the adventure capital of New Zealand – almost every pant-soiling activity created by man can be undertaken there, if that’s your thing. The town centre is littered with adventure shops whose staff openly declare that they’ll take pleasure in throwing you out of a moving plane. Their glossy, hungover eyes inspire little confidence.

The town itself is located on the country’s biggest lake – Wakatipu – and homes around 16,000 people. Many of the town’s residential buildings have made their way up the surrounding mountains, which after the sun falls, bathes them in sparkling light. Atop a few of the tallest mountains are patches of snow leftover from winter, with the ranges being prime ski locations during those colder months. Many of the buildings look like they’ve been lifted directly from a Swiss town, giving the entire place a cozy Alpine feel.

We arrived late morning to a town packed with people. The spell of non-rain that we’d been blessed with was continuing, so we decided to ride the town’s gondola before it was due to turn again the next day. It slowly limped and shuddered its way up the mountain, offering spectacular views from the top.

Also on top of the mountain was a winding luge track that was included with the gondola ride, which was basically a low sitting go-kart that used gravity instead of petrol. They moved surprisingly fast considering that you weren’t strapped in, adding to the Kiwi’s apparently nonchalant attitude towards health and safety; a refreshing change to the cotton-wool-wrapping societies of certain places. After we finished our run and were watching from above, a young bespectacled Asian gentleman with a penchant for speed hit a rubber barrier and sprang himself out of the cart like a kangaroo on amphetamine, ending up on a different track entirely.

We spent the next couple of hours exploring the town, finding ourselves in the picturesque Queenstown Gardens, which jutted out onto the lake opposite the town centre.

Like the park in Blenheim, it was adorned with perfectly kept lawns and mirror-like lakes and rivers. Unlike Blenheim, there were lots of people, including an old chap calmly performing a Tai Chi routine in the middle of a public walkway. When we walked back past him later he was being accosted by a rowdy stag party, but was obviously too nice to deftly jab their drunken throats.

We checked into our hotel and was greeted with a bottle of rose wine to celebrate our arrival, courtesy of an old friend who worked there. That night we went to an awesome place that had the cheapest and probably the tastiest food since we’d been away, called Muskets and Moonshine. In the men’s bathroom was a racing game above the urinal, the car for which could be controlled using your boozy discharge. I crashed multiple times and retired with wet hands.

After a little more wandering about town, we went to bed, ready for another day.

It was due to rain again the next morning, so we decided to go for a drive to an old gold mining place called Arrowtown, which seemed an odd mixture of a one-street American town you see in the movies, and an English countryside. Every building was dedicated to selling food or souvenir tat to tourists, but it had a certain charm to it regardless. We bought some fudge from what had to be the busiest shop in the southern hemisphere, and quickly left before an accidental pregnancy occurred.

Once back in Queenstown, we queued for a famous Fergburger for 45 minutes in the rain, only to discover that they were about as tasty as most Australian burgers. The Aussies are patty-spoiled it seems.

The next day we woke to gloriously sunny skies, so we hopped into the Mazda and made our way towards Glenorchy, another tourist town that also straddles Lake Wakatipu, to the north. The road followed the lake the entire way, and as usual, the views were stunning.

There wasn’t a great deal to do in the town itself, so after a brief amble we drove back to Queenstown, and prepared ourselves for the first rip-roaringly drunken night of the holiday.

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New Zealand Trip – Part Six – Queenstown to Te Anau

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New Zealand Trip – Part Five – Queenstown

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