Moving On

After a great four days in QT our hosts had to go back to making a living. Nik was heading out (he's a contract helicopter pilot currently working in Indonesia; one month on, one month off) and we decided to leave GB to grieve (or revel) in her own way. We look forward to returning next month.

Every day Nik laid out a long laundry list of activities we could do. One of which was to drive to the top of the Remarkables mountain range. Unfortunately, that was usually off the table due to cloud cover on the mountain. However, the day we left, the weather was uncharacteristically awesome so we decided to drive up on our way out of town, with our new mount.

Toyota Hilux Surf

This was a windfall for us. The Surf is the Japanese version (most cars in NZ are imported from Japan because they, too, drive on the wrong side of the road) of the Toyota 4Runner in the US. As it turns out, we had just sold our 4Runner earlier this year, and apart from the controls being on the right side, everything was pretty much identical. It's even the same color (colour?). It has a few buttons that are different though, and since Nik does not know what they do (the owner's manual is in Japanese) we decided it best not to touch them; could be an automatic kamikaze button...if you've seen the traffic in Japan you know why they'd have one.

The road up the mountain is a tortuous labyrinth of switchbacks. The ski area is up there. It's a frightening thought of navigating that road in the winter with ski buses careening down. Great views though. Once we got to the top, the plan was to hike up to a beautiful alpine lake called Lake Alta.

Queenstown (sort of)

QT airport


To get to Lake Alta we had to start at the ski area. Cynthia decided to hunt for some of those things that we all have lost in the snow skiing. Boy did it pay off!!

We finally made it up to Lake Alta. This is what the book says:

"Alta Lake is a small, turquoise teardrop of a lake nestled under the ominously jagged peaks of the Remarkables"..."you'll have no idea how dramatic the view can be, nor how sapphire blue a lake can be".

This is what we saw:

We forgot the ice skates.

We expected to be up there all alone, but instead the place was swarming with others:

Those Ayers, they must really get around!

From here it was down the mountain and onward. We made it as far as Wanaka before we stopped for the day. Actually, we stayed for two nights while I tried to get caught up with the blog. I did not succeed.