Trip report: Christchurch/Lincoln, Queenstown, and Doubtful Sound (2024)

We had moved our Cascade Saddle trip from March to May, but we thought the weather might bequestionable in May, so we moved it again to December. So, we had another week in Queenstownwhere we could do more outdoors activities.

On this trip, I first went to Christchurch (well, Lincoln) to referee at theCanterbury Open, with a stop at Uprising, the bouldering gym, on the Friday.

It turns out that 6:35AM flight to Christchurch was cheaper.I can’t remember how much cheaper. At least with a 6:35AM domestic flightone can take the Airport Express bus and not just sign over the fare savingsstraight to Uber.

Anyway, I got to Hotel Give in Christchurch at 8:40am. Early check-in wasavailable. The hotel staff at first quoted $40 for check-in before 9and $20 for check-in between 9 and check-in time. I said I’d waittill 9, but then he checked me in early for $20 anyway. Thanks! ThenI had a much-needed nap in my room before walking around Christchurch in theafternoon.

Hotel Give is run by a charitable trust, the KindFoundation (which used tobe YMCA Christchurch but left the Y movement). It was pretty busy. Thestandard of the rooms is good. I had a non-ensuite room but it was abit weird: it’s like we really had our own bathroom, but it was justoutside our door. Also, what’s with noisy auto-slamming doors? I figuredout how to not slam them, but it takes effort.

MP came on Saturday and visitedWillowbank again while I was reffingthe kids on Sunday. The Canterbury Open was pretty small this year andI was back in Christchurch by noon on Sunday, exactly when MP made itback from Willowbank. (She had some trouble getting there on the bus,with delays and misconnects, and the Uber she eventually took was justas long as it would’ve been from the hotel, oh well. Go figure.)

We wanderedaround Christchurch some more (Hotel Give is centrally located, whichis nice), getting Bluff oysters at Cellar Door before taking the busto the airport and flying to Queenstown. The Air New Zealand CHClounge was good as usual.

There are a lot of “adventure” activities in Queenstown but we’re notreally into e.g. bungee jumping. We have tried riverboarding but MPsure didn’t like that.

We stayed at the ChaletQueenstown, which is prettyboutique (7 rooms) and good. Breakfast there would have been pretty expensive but neverfit with our schedule anyway.

There was a couple in the room next tous having an issue. I would be very wary of calling in, say, theMontreal police, but, on the advice of the women’s shelter (and someracial profiling on our part), we called them in, and the NZ Policeactually dealt with the situation really well. Unlike Ontario municipal police forces,who essentially just get to dictate their budgets, the NZ police budget is probably not high enough.

Anyway, our planned activities were Ben Lomond and riding bicycles around.The weather forecast suggested that Tuesday would be a better day for BenLomond, so we swapped the days, and Around the Basin was cool with that.

Queenstown Trails biking to Gibbstown, May 20

Biking from Queenstown to Gibbston was, according to MP, just pure Type 1fun. Nothing sketchy at all. The 300m of elevation gain along the 45km was a bit harder for me,even though the bike I’d rented was better than my usual commuter.MP’s ebike made things very easy for her. There is really good off-trackbicycle infrastructure around Queenstown—the Queenstown Trail—and the routes along the riversare highly scenic.

Around the Basin runs trips to Arrowtown or Gibbston (and, moreimportantly, pickups from those places), but we’d just been to Arrowtown a few weeksago, so we went to Gibbston. It has quite a few wineries but doesn’tfeel like a place, or even a village. We chatted with the staff wineguy at Kinross who had moved to Gibbston from UAE, I think, and somewhere in Asiabefore that. Yes, Gibbston is highly scenic, even if there is no “there” there.

These tourist businesses—Around the Basin, Tamaranui Canoe Hire—do have a lot ofinfrastructure, and guys driving vans around a lot. It is definitely hard to avoid needingto drive vans around when there is inadequate public transit. Moving canoes is hard anyway, butmoving bicycles shouldn’t necessarily need so many vans.

Ben Lomond, May 21

This turned out to be a beautiful day for a Ben Lomond hike. We left at7:55, slightly before sunrise, given the 1400m of elevation gain andshort days. Back in town by 16:15, an hour before sunset and in timeto get to the airport to pick up the rental car by 17:00 (though GO rentalsdoes do after-hours pickups and we actually had set ours up as one).

The Tiki Trail on the way down wasn’t much fun. Apart from that, thetrail was really well-maintained between the top of the cable car andthe Ben Lomond Saddle, and then just well-maintained (despite the “maintained trail ends here” sign) through to thesummit. I looked into one-way gondola rides, but the Skyline website does nottalk about that.

We brought ice axes and crampons but they didn’t help and we gave upon the crampons pretty soon. Some others before us thought they wouldbe needed and turned back, but they totally could have continued. Thedozen Nepalis just walked up the mountain very fast.

Welcome Rock, May 22 to 23

After that, we went to Welcome Rock,which is another easy and relatively flat, though long (25km), privatetrack. We did most of it on the first day, looping around the long wayto the SlateHut. It’simpressive that the track was constructed with hand tools, thoughthere isn’t the terrain of the Paparoa to contend with: there was only a small amount of rock moving to do.I would be a bit worried about doing this track on a bicycle (kind of narrow at times), but it’s wellgraded for walking.

The scenery was epic, especially near sunrise/sunset. Since we werewalking until sunset, we did get to appreciate that scenery too.

The mattress in the Slate Hut was comfortable. The prefab hut was wired forelectricity, but there wasn’t any. The stove was a bit ghetto (it had fewerthan 4 legs), but everything worked, and again, the view was epic.There was another car at the parking lot when we got back there, butwe encountered 0 people on the track, just some cars (and a helicopter) on the road part of the walk.

On our way from Welcome Rock to Te Anau, we stopped in Garston for breakfast atThe Coffee Bomb, since we had decided to nothave breakfast at Slate Hut (didn’t want to deal with water, gas, and cleaning). Highly recommended.We had thought about going past Te Anau to walk the Lake Marian Track, but that would have been alot of driving. So, we did our laundry at the Te Anau TOP 10 Holiday Park,which was good to do before going on the boat for 3 days. We also stopped by thePunanga Manu o Te Anau / Te Anau Bird Sanctuary to seemore takahē as well as brown teal/pāteke (both at Zealandia, though I hadn’t seen the male breeding plumage)as well as the Antipodes Island parakeet (not at Zealandia; insurance population).

Back in December 2020 we did a day cruise to DoubtfulSound. That’snot long enough given how hard it is to get there (ferry over LakeManapouri, bus over the Wilmot Pass, then the Doubtful Sound boatit*elf). Real Journeys’s Fiordland Navigator operates 2-night cruisesin May (usually they do 1-night cruises), so I signed us up for onewhen we decided to change the trip. We had a great time on board,even though I’m not usually one for cruises. Well, this is a small boat,just 40m.

We had thought about getting off the Welcome Rock track and proceedingto Lake Marian, but that would have been a lot more driving, so wejust went to Te Anau and stayed there for the day.On the way, The Coffee Bombin Garston had excellent sandwiches (and coffee, but that goes withoutsaying in this country, but I don’t drink coffee anyway).

Since the boat left Manapouri at 12:30 the next day, I had scheduled some calls withmy grad students in the morning, and took those from the holiday park and fromthe corner of a (the?) surprisingly busy cafe in Te Anau. Then we drove over to the Lake Manapouri boat. We were on DoubtfulSound by 2:30, after taking pictures from the usual viewpoint on the Wilmot Pass Road.

I have a lot of photos from this cruise. It’s going to take some timeto sort through them. I discovered that the 12mm lens is actuallypretty useful here, because one is often too close to the fjords. Andthe 100-400 is indispensable for albatross pictures. But most of the timeI was using the fixed 35mm (on APS-C, so 52mm equivalent).

Skipper Dave (with an open-bridge policy, so I dropped in to say hi afew times) arranged it so that we’d be out on the Tasman Sea aroundsunset on both days. You can definitely feel it when you’re on theopen ocean. There were about 10 Buller’s mollymawks, a few shags, anda couple of bottlenose dolphin encounters.

The ship’s naturalist, whose name eludes me now, had a good radio voice,and explained many facts about where we were. He helped drive the boat at times too.Dave didn’t quite have a good radio voice.

The skipper mentioned on several occasions that Real Journeys was agood company to work for. They’d been family held until the pandemic,but needed capital to re-launch when tourism started again, and tookinvestment from Milford AssetManagement. Nothing had changed so far(kind of like MEC, which has maybe even gotten better under PE). Hehad been one of the few to be driving boats during the lockdowns totransport power dam workers as an essential service.

There was a mix of people on the boat, with some pro photographers anda handful of serious amateurs; mostly New Zealanders, I think, withsome Australians living in New Zealand, and some from overseas(notably the US). There was a distribution of ages, too, though itprobably skewed older than the population average. May is not hightourist season in NZ.

We stayed in a “family-share cabin”, which was going to be renovatedaway as part of scheduled maintenance this winter. It had four beds (twotimes two bunk beds). Not fancy, but comfortable. There are going to betwin-share and double cabins next season, apparently all with ensuites.We had, again, shared bathrooms and showers, which were totally fine, really.

Day 1: to Christmas Cove

The first day was just motoring around to the Tasman Sea (way farther thanCrooked Arm, which is as far as one gets on a day trip), looking at the scenery and at the wildlife,and then heading back to Christmas Cove (Precipice Cove on the map) tomoor for the night. We went through the Malaspina Reach and ThompsonSound, for a total of 80km on the Fiordland Navigator.

Once we docked, Cesar and his kitchen staff had prepared one of our twoamazing dinners on the boat. The first day included mussels, beef, ceviche,and tasty salads.

Day 2: water activities and then through to First Arm

While Day 1 was bluebird, Day 2 was cloudy, and it had rained overnight,so we got more waterfalls. But first, we paddled around Christmas Cove for5km (or some people took the tender and got narration). There were seals andthere was a double rainbow. When we drove around to waterfalls, I found thatI was often too close for 35mm, but 12mm captures more of the walls. Also, there wasswimming. The water was cold.

Apart from that, we navigated around to Crooked Arm, Patea Passage andthe Tasman Sea, then behind the Shelter Islands for more albatrossspotting, and in to First Arm for the night. That is a total of 92kmon the day, plus 5km in a (not sit-on-top!) kayak.

Our second and final dinner was delicious again, with slow-cooked meatand a seafood mix, and of course salads.

Day 3: back to civilization

We left before sunrise and motored over to Hall Arm (where the day cruise goes). We saw the day cruise sailing outas we came in to Deep Cove, actually. All of the Real Journeys trips do a Sound of Silence in Hall Arm, so we did that,and heard bellbirds and, I think, a kea. I’d also heard bellbirds on the kayaks.

Then we reversed the journey, back over Wilmot Pass Road and Lake Manapouri, taking us back to town at noon asadvertised.

Two hours of driving later, we got to Queenstown, returned our car,and took our flight back to Wellington without anycomplications. Well, getting gas is always a bit annoying, but not ahuge complication. Arriving at 5pm it’s easy to take the number 2bus from WLG. Sometimes one can even transfer to the 21 and avoid the walk upthe hill.

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