Glenorchy - Starting point for alpine hikes

Our next stage led us to the alpine area around Lake Wakatipu. Queenstown is particularly well-known here, which almost all New Zealand tourists and many adventurous Kiwis visit. Queenstown is the mecca for adventure and party tourism, bungee jumping was invented here, you can book tours with any kind of vehicle from bicycles to enduro motorcycles or quads to helicopter sightseeing or even fly with a sports plane to Milford Sound. Accordingly, there is a lot going on here, the parking lot of the supermarket at the entrance to town was hopelessly overcrowded. In the few minutes that I waited there while Martin was doing the shopping, the planes landed at the airport right next door almost in rapid succession, unbelievable. Since we knew that it would be too busy here, we didn't want to stay overnight here anyway, but just wanted to eat a burger in the hip place based on a tip from 2 Germans we met a few days ago ... well, we struggled through the traffic jam through the city, at some point we saw a crowd of people standing on the sidewalk. That was the line in front of the burger place, just like at Curry 36 on Mehringdamm at the height of business. We skipped a visit to Queenstown and then continued straight to our actual destination Glenorchy at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu.

The somewhat one-hour drive along the lake shore was fantastic. What a view! Unfortunately, it was quite overcast on the way there, but since the road is a dead end, we had to drive back as well. And there we had bright sunshine and could enjoy the view of the lake wonderfully.

Glenorchy itself is a rather quiet little town, although it is touristy, but not crowded and has a pleasant alpine flair. The previous night was not just about alpine flair, the weather suddenly got quite alpine early in the afternoon. Which means it got freezing cold. Dinner in freezing cold wind and not even 10 degrees anymore, frost was predicted for the night. In any case, I closed all possible closures of my sleeping bag tightly, and that was necessary too. But in the morning there was blue sky!

Those who come to Glenorchy want to go hiking. Accordingly, there is a completely different audience here than in Queenstown, everyone we spoke to there during our 3-day stay also thought Queenstown was terrible. As it happened, we met a married couple from Switzerland again, whom we had met at the very beginning of our tour on the Coromandel Peninsula with their bicycles. At first, we thought they must have come a long way in that time or must have taken a bus. No, they bought a car because they were tired of driving in the wind. They simply went on bike tours at the destinations, but no longer had to ride the long stages with luggage. In any case, we had very nice conversation partners in the evenings.

Of course, we went hiking too, one day the first stage of the famous Routeburn Track to a beautiful high plateau and the other day to the Invincible Mine, an abandoned gold mining village. For both hikes, the starting points were several kilometers further up the valley along beautiful gravel roads. To get to the starting point of the second hike, we had to drive through a mountain creek, which also crossed the road in a bend. After some back and forth, 2 cyclists came who coolly rode through it. Well, we plucked up our courage and dared it too. It worked out pretty well, only our boots got a good soak. And the hike afterwards was beautiful, and unlike the Routeburn Track, there were hardly any people here. Once again, it has been shown that New Zealand is particularly attractive away from the highlights.