Queenstown Round One: Gravel and Sky

I know I said no more posts until next week, but Queenstown has been too ridiculous to keep it to ourselves. What follows is not for the faint of heart.

We left Christchurch on Thursday morning to drive down the coast to Dunedin and then across the mountains to Queenstown. It was basically like Grand Theft Auto: The British Edition. Round One- you drive on the wrong side of the road. Round Two- the road gets precariously twisty and mountainous. Round Three- it starts to snow. Round Four- it gets dark (see left for accurate representation of visibility). Round Five- you enter a gorge where the roads are two lanes snaking along the side of sheer rock faces over a giant river shadowed by mountains on both sides, and it's still snowing, and it's dark as death. And then, game over. A police officer stopped us and said they were closing the road through the gorge and we would have to turn around.

Here's how you get bonus points.

Officer: Sorry ladies, you'll have to go back to Cromwell and try again tomorrow.
Me: What if we have snow chains?
Officer: How fast can you put them on?
Me: (with a confident nod) Fast.

Mind you, we have never seen these snow chains before. But we pull over and start running around the car frantically attaching snow chains to our tires. By way of ambiance: it was zero degrees, snowing, the road was sheer ice, and it was pitch black out. (Photo to the right is me removing chains post storm after the gorge- there was no time for photography in the crisis moment). With a little help from the officer who kindly took pity on us, we got the chains on. While the locals in their pick up trucks were told to take the party home tonight, somehow three American girls in a front wheel drive Nissan were allowed to drive through the gorge in a blizzard. Nice.

We were the last car allowed into the gorge driving towards Queenstown that night. We drove the next hour through the gorge at 10 km/ hour, blasting country music and trying desperately to forget that just to our left was a sheer drop for thousands of feet. It turns out that's a difficult reality to ignore. Girls from Chicago may not be afraid of a little snow, but anyone with good sense is afraid of plummeting to their death. But we made it through safely, if not disproportionately aged, and even played good samaritans by calling emergency services for a car headed in the other direction that got stuck in a snow bank. And it turned out to be a miracle because people were stuck in Cromwell (known only for having two giant fruit statues along the road) for the next two days.

Ten minutes after we arrived in Queenstown.

Fifteen minutes after arrival.

Finally able to form complete sentences again.
We woke up the next morning feeling like we could conquer the world. So we did what any good adrenaline junky does-- we jumped off a cliff. I went hang gliding off the Remarkables mountain range. Clare went paragliding off Coronet peak. I'll let the pictures tell this story.

My jump point.

My wings.

My flight.



My victory dance.
And then it was Clare's turn. Her jump point.


Her flight.

And then the extended victory dance began. We ended up at the cleverly named Irish bar Pog Mahone's (misspelling intentional, bonus points for translation) where we befriended the owner and the musician, who was mostly playing reggae versions of Irish drinking songs. As usual, we tried to get him to play Cecilia, and he eventually whipped out an acoustic verse and let us sing it. Simon & Garfunkel have not made inroads in this part of the world, but Clare and I are single-handedly trying to fix that.



The night ended at Fergburger, photographs not provided.

**For anyone jonesing for more photos of the trip, Clare has recently posted a ton on Facebook. You should be able to see them if you are either her or my Facebook friend. I claim zero responsibility for the content of those photos and likenesses of me should not be misconstrued as actual reflections of my conduct.**