Queenstown

No traffic on the road up the lake

The drive over from Te Anau was a real pleasure, again with very little traffic on the road. Last time we drove into Queenstown the traffic crawled all the way from Frankton, but not so this time. The widened road and the new public transport system no doubt helped, but so did the lack of vehicles.

We parked up at a very ordinary camping ground on the road out to Coronet Peak, but at $20 a night with power (half price offer), we weren’t complaining!

View from Pog Mahone’s

We had a good walk around the town, a drink at Pog Mahone’s, then met up with Gretchen, an old school friend for dinner with her and her husband Graeme at their place. This is the view from their lounge.

Next day we spent more time wandering around the town, which was very empty. We were intrigued by the shark rides, and watched 2 lots of people go out in them. They’re like a small submarine, but also leap out of the water. Maybe we might have been keen 40 years ago....

Shark heading out for some fun

We bought a famous Fergburger for lunch, and sat on the floating bar to eat it.

That evening we had dinner with Vanessa and Pete.

Lovely to have friends who were happy to pick us up and drop us off as walking in the cold and dark at this time of year is not very appealing.

Empty waterfront 

Milford Sound

We booked a half price cruise on the Sound, $49pp, leaving at 11a.m. Quite an early start for us, on the road at 7.30! We had left ourselves plenty of time, so we thought, and stopped off at Mirror Lakes.

There are usually several buses that drop off at one end, then slowly move up to the other end of the boardwalk to collect their passengers. No buses and only one other person when we were there! Same story in Milford. The bus park that usually holds 50 buses was empty apart from a couple of cars and a truck.

There were very few vehicles on the road in. The only vehicles that passed us were people working on the road. And, as we discovered, checking road conditions. We were stopped and told to pull over because of black ice ahead. We had to wait more than 20 minutes for a grit truck to go through. Then we just missed the green light for the tunnel, so had to wait another 8 minutes there. So we arrived at the car park with minutes to spare. A quick dash to an empty terminal and we boarded just on 11, along with a Canadian couple, the last on board, whew!

The trip was very pleasant, much the same as it was when I last did it about 25 years ago. Except we were literally the only boat on the Sound, even better than back then. And quite amazing since before COVID there would have been a couple of cruise ships as well as 7 or 8 other boats! Most of the passengers were foreigners, to our surprise. Young people stuck, or who have chosen to stay, in NZ where it is safer. They didn’t seem too concerned about social distancing so we stayed, mostly on our own, in the cabin while they crowded outside in the bow and stern. It hadn’t rained for a while so the waterfalls were smallish, but a pod of dolphins treated us to a great display.

Manapouri and Te Anau

From Tuatapere we moved on to Manapouri. We stayed for free in a paddock behind the motor lodge. The church bar had just reopened, so we enjoyed a drink with a few locals. The roads were very quiet, hardly anyone about, but the lake looked beautiful, so calm. Plenty of bird life around too.

We then spent 3 nights in a camping ground close to the lake in Te Anau. The NZMCA has negotiated a price of $20 a night on power with an increasing number of camping grounds over the winter months. It was about half full, a few kiwis, but mostly young foreign couples.

Empty Te Anau streets

We met some from Italy, Germany and Canada. They were on working visas, have no jobs but OK financially so, like us, they’re making the most of the opportunity to see the country. Also a Chinese family from Auckland who had been in NZ for 7 years. They were making the most of cheap camper van prices to see the country.

Great to have power and not worry about whether there’s enough sun to keep the batteries charged!


The lake’s sailing ship, Faith, was doing free 10 minute trips to celebrate its 85th birthday, so we joined a couple of locals for a quick trip. It was so smooth and quiet.

Life after lockdown

Well, the world went crazy not long after we got back to Rolleston. COVID 19 closed everything down. We felt very lucky to be in a warm and comfortable place with plenty of access to everything we needed, and a good group of friends in our bubble.

Lunch stop at Waihola

But it was great to be able to hit the road again, which we did the first day of Level 2. First night we stayed at Maheno, then after a few nights in Gore, and a couple more in Invercargill we headed to Riverton.

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The town itself as very empty, but the camping ground was open, and the Beach house cafe was selling coffee. It’s still a beautiful place.