On arrival in New Zealand I was struck by how familiar the setting seemed; the barren mountain-sides, drizzle and sheep transported me back to days when I have cycled through Connemara. It was a shock as New South Wales (only three hours away) is so different in terms of its beaches, sunshine, droughts, bush, snakes and kangaroos. While I am very fond of Ireland’s natural beauty, New Zealand is a long way to travel to visit an over-sized version of Connemara. Naturally I would soon learn about the diversity of the landscape in New Zealand. It truly is a stunning piece of geography; not only have I cycled through parts of Connemara but the Swiss Alps and conceivably the Amazon too. I am typing this in Glacier Country and it’s very bizarre to see how the glaciers run into the rainforest and then into the Southern Pacific Ocean.
My first week in Queenstown was spent in a party hostel. This made the most sense as it is a party town ... certainly not a place fit for a Queen. It’s the kind of place where tourists spend a week to get their adrenaline kicks by day and to drink a few shots to settle their nerves by night. This made it easy to make some friends. Of course, it would have been very easy to spend a week, then a month and before you know it a year has passed and you are working behind a bar. I am old enough to recognise a slippery slope when I see one!
When you love descending Alpine passes on a bike for free the attraction of the ‘extreme’ stuff is diminished. Why do a thirty second bungy when you can throw your bike down a mountain at speeds of over 80kph for thirty minutes? Thus, I bungyed neither the ‘Ledge’ nor ‘Nevis’, I did not swing through a canyon, I did not sky-dive Queenstown and I did not jet the Shotover river. My feet stayed firmly on terra firma ... unless of course, they were on the pedals. I did manage to check out the mountain-biking and there are some really cool trails. I had plans to ride the long and steep Dewer Track but having descended 6k into Skipper’s Canyon I realised that it was one of those tracks that you would not want to start at 1pm in the day, you would definitely need a back-pack of food and gear and you would probably want a flare in case you needed to get choppered off the mountain. Thankfully, my experience of Connemara has taught me to respect a changeable climate - I do not plan on being the Irish kid making headlines back home for all the wrong reasons. I biked back out of the Canyon and just did a road ride up to Coronet Peak ski-station instead. They do have some dedicated trails for mountain-biking. The coolest is probably the ‘Vertigo’ track straight down through the trees beside the Gondola. Being a roadie I’m not used to descending long off-road sections of over twenty percent in gradient. Thus, I was happier slogging it up to the top on the access trail. This is a fire-trail that people would race and time themselves up ... needless to say I made sure to make time to stop and check that my brake pads weren’t rubbing on the way up ... Goddam 16 kilo mountain-bikes !
Having neither jumped off the ‘Ledge’ nor slipped down the proverbial slope, I hatched plans to get out of there. It’s a cool town but there is definitely a hint of Seahaven (the town in the Truman Show) to it. It’s all a bit surreal really. I didn’t have the time to peel off the layers of the onion to get to the heart of Queenstown. It seems a place over-run with tourists and we all know that tourists keep their head down and their minds closed so that they can visit a place to check the boxes. Of course, it didn’t help that the weather was shocking for the week I spent there. The scenery is stunning if the cloud isn’t so low-slung that you can see it. It was only while waiting for a pizza that I managed to see the Revolver DVD being played on the TV. This DVD showed people, base-jumping, down-hilling, hang-gliding, dirt-jumping etc. However, I recognised the faces as being those who worked in the shops as opposed to those of the token 23 year old tourist that one would see in the marketing DVDs for all the extreme stuff that happens here. I stayed to enjoy the whole DVD. The penny dropped that this is the real Queenstown; people who moved here so they could do the extreme sports they love on their days free from serving tourists in a piece of nature that we all know from the Lord of the Rings to be stunning.
Next port of call – Wanaka
Marco