We stayed 3 nights in Queenstown, meeting up with our friend Jay from Boulder, getting some off-bike time and generally begin tourists.
Queenstown is the center of the outdoor universe of NZ, and its most touristic, busy and expensive city to visit. It’s set in an almost otherworldly beautiful location, on the edge of a lake framed by dramatic mountains. Our motel was just out of the main town in the Frankton area, right across from the lake. I was surprised we were able to leave the patio since the view was so intoxicating!
We ate nice dinners in Queenstown, met up with friends for beers and dinner, got laundry done, did some aimless walking around admiring gardens and shops, and Jay and Chris took the gondola up for the panoramic views. Queenstown reminds us of any number of touristy towns we’ve visited before, including many in Colorado.
Our second full day in the Queenstown area, we took the bus to Arrowtown, a much smaller town back towards Wanaka that we passed on our bikes on the way in to Queenstown. While kind of low-key touristy, it’s much smaller and much less crowded, and we had a nice afternoon there just poking around, visiting the excellent museum, having lunch and then taking the bus back. Oh, and fitting in some coffee and ice cream.
And then the next day we took off on the final segment of the trip to Bluff, which is about 150 miles and should take us 3 days?
After we left, Jay picked up a car to tour around while we are riding to the end, and then we’ll travel together in that car once we finish the ride! He’ll meet up with us again in Bluff.
We woke up early and got packed to meet the 8AM ferry across the lake to Walter Peak. Sadly, the early boat does not use the historic steamship used in the middle of the day, but we needed to get going to be able to ride the 105km on gravel roads to Mossburn.
The gravel road is empty! And it’s glorious to feel the quiet and isolation of this side of the lake. I guess we’re not that used to the rush and chatter of busy places any more. The views of the mountains and lake are beautiful as we cycle along, sometimes flanked by other riders who ride with us and chat for a bit before leaving us in the dust on a hill!
Leaving Walter Peak, the road slopes up gradually for 20 miles or so, then abruptly rises before descending gradually for the next 35 miles. The total distance we rode today was about 65 miles since I forgot to turn off my tracker while we crossed the lake.
The views as we left Walter Peak were spectacular with dramatic mountains around the lake. Higher mountains are on the horizon as we head south, transitioning to drier terrain with lower mountains flanking the wide valley. After light winds in the morning, we had a strong headwind for about 20 miles in the afternoon, skirting washboard as much as we could with varying success, and then gratefully got a nice tailwind the last 20 miles into Mossburn on a curvy cycle path. Thank heavens…riding 100+ km on gravel is hard enough without big headwinds.
Mossburn is a nice quiet town with an old railway hotel recommended by cyclists. And, it has a bar and restaurant, meaning that we were able to get cold beers and make a dinner reservation at the same time as checking in for our room. This is great! And dinner was really good, with a bottle of NZ cabernet.
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