Another Queenstown Weekend

This last weekend, some friends were headed to Queenstown with a few extra seats in their car.  Since I had nothing else planned, I decided to go along!  We left Saturday morning, returning late Sunday evening, and had a lot of fun in between.  Our first stop was in Arrowtown on the way there, where we explored the Chinese Settlement remnants, through town, and along the river.

With some wee houses

By the time we finally got to Queenstown it was already mid-afternoon, so we decided to just do a short tramp.  Four of us from the group did the walk up Queenstown Hill, which was about 3 hrs round trip (including many view breaks and picture opportunities).  Even though it was quite quick and easy and right near town, the views were rewarding.  And what a blessing to have such a beautiful, sunny day!  

The crew at the top of Queenstown Hill

It's important to enjoy the view from every angle possible

After our hike we had a pretty relaxed evening in Queenstown eating Thai food, watching the All-Blacks vs. Australia game at a bar, and heading to bed early to get a good start the next day.  

In the morning, Ryan and I split off from the rest of the group, who decided to drive an hour to do part of the Routeburn track.  Last time I was in Queenstown I had decided I wanted to try paragliding, so I booked the earliest flight at 10am.  We did the 45 minute tramp to the take-off area (instead of paying for the gondola again), and I went paragliding!  Ryan didn't feel like trying it, so he was my personal photographer :)  After I met my instructor, we walked a bit to the take-off site, got all geared up, and before I knew it we were off!  I had thought that I might get a little scared around the taking off, but I was surprised how natural and amazing it felt.  Take off really was only about as scary as a chair lift, and once we were up in the air all I could think about was the breath-taking view. Paragliding really has to be the best way to see an area.  The flight lasted about 10 minutes - we started up in the trees, flew over the luge track and then out over Queenstown.  It's hard to really describe how beautiful was and I'm not sure if the pictures really do it justice... so you'll have to take my word for it.  We did a few tricks on the way down (kind of spinning around in a corkscrew), then landed in a park, from where I took the Gondola back up to meet Ryan.  I don't think I am at risk of becoming a paragliding addict (I think the price tag might ensure that) but it was definitely worth it and I enjoyed every second!

That's me out there!

Taking pictures with the GoPro mid-flight

After I warmed back up with a cup of tea in the gondola cafe, Ryan and I set off to continue our tramp on the Ben Lomond trail to the saddle.  We had wanted to do the summit, which in the summer you can just walk to, but the snow this time of year unfortunately would've required some mountaineering equipment... But nonetheless, we had a wonderful tramp to the saddle!  Just beyond the gondola, we turned to the other side of the hill and hiked through lovely multi-colored tussock.  Encountered a few mountain goats along the way.  Then we climbed further up towards the saddle, where it got a bit snowier and steeper.  Right at the top of the ridge on the saddle, you can suddenly see over the other side out towards the next range of mountains!  So incredible!  I almost feel like I shouldn't even post pictures since they really don't do it justice, but just keep that in mind while viewing them... 

View at the saddle towards the Ben Lomond Summit

Lake Wakatipu

Scenic lunch spot.  Everything tastes better when tramping!

After paragliding, a great hike, and lunch with an amazing guy at the saddle, the only thing more I could have asked for was a little sun.  Oh well, can't have everything, right?  Definitely a great weekend in Queenstown, and soon I will post some panoramas from the hikes!  And next weekend, I'll be farming for spring break on the north island, so look forward to some posts about that in the near future :)

Orokonui

This last friday, I volunteered for the second time at the Orokonui Ecosanctuary, about 15 minutes from Dunedin.  Last time I went it was pretty cold and rainy, but this time I was lucky enough to have a beautiful, sunny day (and I was able to take some pictures!).  Orokonui is a 759 acre reserve surrounded by a massive fence to exclude most introduced pests.  This allows the indigenous plants and wildlife, birds especially, to thrive.  It's only a few years old, but it's already become an amazing place to visit and explore.  However, they depend a lot on the help of volunteers to keep it running!  My friend Dani has been volunteering there for a few months, and invited me to come along since she knew I was interested in conservation.  The first time I went, we spent the first hour cleaning lichen off the outside of the fence (glamorous job, right?).  It's important to keep it clean as the fence clean as the lichen provides the bit of traction that pests might need to get into the sanctuary.  We spent the rest of the time doing some trail work, to keep tracks manageable for visitors.  This last visit, we walked around for a bit putting out old fruit for the birds to eat (picture below), then helping to put together mousetraps.  Thousands of mousetraps have to be placed all around the perimeter to make sure that not too many get in.

Orokonui really is a beautiful place, and I hope to be able to get out there at least a few more times before the semester ends.  It's nice to know that I'm helping out by volunteering, but also very selfishly, it's just so wonderful to be spend a few hours in such a beautiful place with awesome people.  If you want to know more about the sanctuary, their website is: http://www.orokonui.org.nz/ . Anyways, here are a few of the pictures I managed to snap during my last visit!

Greenfinch enjoying some sugar water

Fruit for the birds

View of the Orokonui visitor's center, and the fence to keep out non-native predators 

Port Chalmers, from near Orokonui 

 The drive back. Beautiful!

Weston Winery

I've gotten a bit behind in doing blog posts, so to start off I want to tell you about my trip to Weston Winery last week as the last session of my 'Discovering Wine' course.  The course was led by Geoff Weston, owner of Weston Winery, which is the Southern-most winery in the world.  He was the funniest little kiwi man, who would just go off on the most random tangents about wine and history and whatever else he wanted.  

During each of the sessions at Uni, we tasted six different wines and learned about the background and characteristics of each.  We tried a variety of grapes, wines from different regions, as well as a few champagnes and ports.  I still don't feel like a pro at wine by any stretch, but I definitely gained a much greater appreciation for good wine, learned a lot, and had a bit of fun doing it as well.  I would still say that I prefer white whines, especially Riesling, as apparently it takes a while to develop an appreciation for drier red wines...

Going to Geoff's winery was the perfect way to end the course.  His winery is just a little stone building in his backyard in a suburban neighborhood of Dunedin.  But it was so cute inside, with lots of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling, candles, and barrels of wine all around.  He had picked out a few of his own wines for us to try along with the ones we had each brought.  Trying them all in sequence, it was so obvious that his were so much better than the rest... We had his sauvignon blanc and chardonnay.  Hopefully someday I'll get a chance to try the rest!

 Geoff telling some stories

 Geoff, Elise, and Ryan

This weekend in pictures

This weekend was a bit dreary and rainy in Dunedin.  Though I'd been hoping to go on a hike Saturday, the weather ruined my plans a bit... It was, however, a productive weekend in terms of food (see below).  I also made a visit to the Otago Museum.  I didn't get to see everything, so I'll definitely be going back, but I did quite enjoy the 'Animal Attic', as well as seeing some of the Lapita Pottery we've been learning about in Pacific Societies. 

 Seeded rosemary fig crackers with carrot marmalade (homemade!)

 Classic dinner of meat(/tofu), taters, and vegetables, with a little bit of local organic Green Man ginger beer.

 Honey poppy seed rolls

 Shards of Lapita Pottery

 So many birds!

Bushball

This past weekend, I went on the Tramping Club trip to Bushball, an expedition of 60 hikers to the Aspiring Hut in Mount Aspring National Park.  I'm not sure if pictures can really do it justice, but still, a picture is worth a thousand words....

 Campfire the first night

After a long five hour drive there with a few stops at pubs along the way, we crashed the first night in the Rasberry Carpark at the base of the trail.  Even though it was dark, the light from the moon was just enough to show what a beautiful place we were in.  And the sunrise the next morning was even more breathtaking.  After some porridge and tea, we set off!  It was quite weird to see so many fellow trampers along the path.  We took a lot of breaks along the way to take photos, eat snacks, and toss around a frisbee.  Although its only supposed to be a 2-2.5 hour tramp, we spread it out over a good 4-5 hours.  The tramp was incredibly beautiful - tussock fields, with huge majestic mountains rising straight up, and a raging river running through.  We saw a lot of sheep and cattle along the trail for the first part as well, as part of the area is leased to a farmer.  After dropping our stuff off at the hut, we did another 2-hr roundtrip tramp to the Pearl Flats, which was equally stunning.  

 Sunrise over the mountains

What a view!

:) 

 This is real life.

Pearl flats

Aspiring Hut

The hut was so much bigger and modern than I had expected.  There were two bunkrooms, holding about 40 people, and a full kitchen and dining area, though usually there is no electricity (we brought a generator).  With so many people and a fire raging, we managed to get it quite warm in there.  I was actually too hot with my sleeping bag unzipped!  That night, we made a full dinner of curry pumpkin soup, pasta, and caramel slice, and had a full cooked breakfast in the morning as well.  Not so bad for tramping!  

On Sunday we woke up to a bit of rain and clouds, so after cleaning up the hut, we hiked straight out.  Without any stops, the way back only took 2 hours, and then we just had another 5 hour drive home.  It was really an amazing weekend, full of wonderful scenery and meeting lots of new friends.  Although I think I prefer tramping in a wee bit smaller of a group, my first tramp here in New Zealand has just made me more excited for many more adventures to come.