Pete & Lori's Retirement adventures

We left Wanaka early to tackle the Crown Range Road back toward Queenstown. Members of the New Zealand Travel Tips Facebook group (NZTT) had flagged it as one to take seriously — steep drops and hairpin turns that reward good conditions and punish bad ones. We had sun, dry pavement, and no wind, so we went for it. It was a genuinely fun drive, and it opened up the wide landscape of Central Otago in a way the main highway just wouldn’t have.

We had no real reason to stop in Queenstown, but hunger made the decision for us. We pulled over at the Smoke and Pickle food truck for a quick lunch and were glad we did. If you’re headed there, skip Fergburger and try the food truck instead.

On the drive south toward Te Anau, we pulled over at a roadside viewpoint for the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Site. The fields were carpeted in bog pine, a small, low-growing shrub found only in New Zealand. When the glaciers finally retreated thousands of years ago, they left behind thin, leached soils where little else can grow — which is exactly where bog pine takes hold. This landscape is a living record of what much of New Zealand looked like as it slowly recovered from the last ice age. We walked around a bit, admired the thick moss growing under the shrubs, and felt like we’d stumbled onto something most people drive right past.

Up before sunrise the next day, we drove to Milford Sound in the dark — which, as we discovered on the return in full daylight, was actually a daring move. The road is worth slowing down for and we saw the steep drop off cliffs when we went back to Te Anau at the end of the day! Out at the dock, we joined a small cruise with about twenty other passengers and headed into the sound just after sunrise. The rock walls rise over 3,900 feet on either side, carved out by glaciers, with waterfalls dropping straight off the cliffs into the water. On the calm and sunny day we happened to have, which is a rare event, our captain took us all the way out into the Tasman Sea, where we ran into dolphins and sea lions going about their business.

After the cruise, we hopped a water taxi across to Sandfly Point — the endpoint of the famous Milford Track — and hiked in through beech forest along the Arthur River to Giant Gate Falls, about two hours in. Neither of us had done anything quite like this before, and we loved every bit of it. Our water taxi captain Jeff was waiting for us on the late afternoon return, which we appreciated more than he probably knows.

The next day we hiked out and back to the first hut on the Kepler Track, another one of New Zealand’s Great Walks, with two Canadians we met along the way, Bev and Morley. A four-hour round trip, good conversation, lunch at the hut. A simple and satisfying day.

That evening we drove twenty minutes south to Manapouri, where we had a lovely place to stay and a host, Vicky, who recommended we make a reservation at The Church for dinner — the only restaurant in town, as it turns out, and a good one worth knowing about.

The following morning involved a bit of an expedition just to reach Doubtful Sound: a boat across Lake Manapouri, then a coach, then the ship. The sound itself is quieter and more remote than Milford, and we were glad we made the effort. If you’re visiting Fiordland, doing both cruises is worth it.

That night there was a full moon eclipse. Clouds rolled in at the key moment, but the sky around it was clear enough to keep us outside longer than was probably wise. We’re retired — we can sleep in.