After a good night's sleep we got an early start with a Wilderness Jet boat tour into Mount Aspiring National Park. We booked a half-day tour through Dart River Adventures.
A bus ride took us up to the town of Glenorchy, where we started off with a temperate rainforest walk, which was peaceful and tranquil compared to the heart-pounding jet boat ride that followed.
Jetboats are propelled by rapidly drawing water in and expelling it out the back of the boat, rather than by using propellers -- it's more like a jetski than a "regular" boat. Because it doesn't have a propeller, a jetboat is great at navigating shallow waters at dizzying speeds. In our case, we went as fast as 60 miles per hour at our top speed on the Dart River, and our driver made it a point to do several quick 360-degree turns during our 50 minute ride. Exhilarating!
After a wild boating experience in the morning, we decided to do a more leisurely-paced boat excursion in the evening with a dinner cruise on the TSS Earnslaw. The Earnslaw is a steamship that was built in 1912 specifically to transport cargo to and from the sheep stations and outposts on Lake Wakatipu. Her cargo space had room for 1500 sheep and 30 head of cattle.
As road access improved in this part of New Zealand, the Earnslaw was needed less and less to transport livestock. Instead, in the late 60's she was refitted as a tourist attraction, ferrying passengers between the Queenstown dock and the Walter Peak station several times a day.
We took the evening dinner cruise, which arrived at Walter Peak homestead after a 45 minute lake cruise. We had a delicious buffet dinner, followed by a stroll in the nearby gardens and a sheep shearing and sheep herding demonstration.
The presentation about modern-day sheep farming was really interesting; New Zealand sheep are known for their high-quality merino wool. They are shorn either once or twice per year, depending on sheep breed and how fast their coat grows in. When they aren't in the paddock to be shorn, they roam free through the large hilly pastures around the station. Which is why the sheepdogs are needed to herd them together when it's time to be moved from one pasture to another, or if they need to be brought in to be shorn. It's fascinating to watch the dogs creep, stalk, and intimidate the sheep into going wherever they are supposed to go.
On the return trip at sundown, we all piled into the Earnslaw, ordered drinks from the bar, and a piano player passed out songbooks for an old-fashioned singalong. I've had the tune of "Waltzing Matilda" stuck in my head ever since!
The next morning, we were picked up by our enthusiastic guide Vicky for a wine-tasting tour in the Gibbston Valley.
We visited 3 wineries and had a wonderful lunch al fresco in the wine garden at Kinross. Our sommelier introduced us to some wonderful pairings as we ate delicious food in a beautiful setting.
We made it back to Queenstown in plenty of time to attend an information briefing for our four-day hike in the New Zealand back country. (More about that in our next post...) After the briefing, we took a quick trip up the Queenstown Skyline gondola to get some stunning views of the town and lake before heading back down into town to stand in a long line for a world-famous Fergburger for dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment