To Glenorchy … and back

NZ – A trip to Glenorchy at EveryTrail

The guidebooks don’t tell you a lot about what to do when in Queenstown other than “extreme sports”, so it was useful to get the advice from some other “mature tourists” that the “Road to Glenorchy” was a must and that you just must stop at Little Paradise for tea on the way. Intrigued by this, we obeyed, and had a wonderful stopover in the most amazing garden sitting on the side of Lake Wakatipu half-way up the road to Glenorchy. Just take a look at the photos below or here to see what I mean.

Once you get to Glenorchy you find yourself at the wharfside of where a paddle steamer once reached as it travelled the length of the lake. As you can read in the panels below [click on them to enlarge them] the boat had to be built on the lake as there was no access to the sea. Quite an achievement!

                            
The rest of the photos give a flavour of Lake Wakatipu and the scenery around about Queenstown. That evening we “dined” by the lake, watching para-gliders taking-off and landing on the lake in front of us whilst eating “the most amazing burgers in the world” (Ruth’s words) from Fergburger, also described in the Lonely Planet guide as a “rite of passage”. It was good!

From Knobs Flat to Queenstown

NZ – Knobs Flat to Queenstown at EveryTrail

NZ – Knobs Flat to Queenstown at EveryTrail

This was going to be a long day, and a long drive – from Knobs Flat round to Queenstown, with not a lot in between.

The day started from the cabin and I’ve provided a couple of pictures of Knobs Flat to give you an idea of the place. [As with all (or most of) the images, if you click on them they should open in a new window so that you can view them better.]

The first stop was to be lunch – we drove quite a distance to a lay by near Parawa where we shared the view with some bikers who were obviously touring as well. The views were huge (as usual) – you can get some idea of them below, although the pictures doesn’t really do the landscape credit.

  
Then it was press on to Fairlight and Kingston (where we didn’t stop to ride the Kingston Flyer – a historic train ride). Lake Wakatipu was soon in sight and we started the drive along the side of this winding lake on which Queenstown stands. A few views of the lake are included below, including one of the view from our Motel once we got to Queenstown. You can see the day was a bit overcast, but the sun did break through – but unfortunately not at spots where I wanted to take photographs!

  

  

All that was left for the day was to walk around Queenstown, find somewhere to eat which we did in a delightful small French Restaurant – quite atypical of much else that we saw in the town which gave the appearance of being a “young people’s place” and most definitely a tourist “hot-spot” – the coach tours were everywhere!

On our walk we did see something you don’t see everyday however and so it just had to be snapped. Hope you like this as much as we did