North of Queenstown

Travelling up the eastern side of Lake Wakatipu, we spotted the Earnslaw (above) on it's way back to Queenstown from Walter Peak High Country Farm. The TSS Earnslaw is a 1912 Edwardian vintage twin-screwed steamer and makes this trip several times a day, carrying tourists back and forth. The Earnslaw has been a Queenstown icon for as long as I can remember.

Further along, we stopped at Wilson Bay. It was a rather damp day with plenty of low cloud hanging over the mountains.

On the eastern side of the road, more snow-capped hills and mountains.

Pigeon Island is the largest island in Lake Wakatipu. It's in the northern part of the lake.

Glenorchy

This is as far north as we are going today. Further on are the Routeburn Track (one of NZ's great walks), Paradise, and Diamond Lake.

More photos on the way back to Queenstown.

This is looking out over Bob's Cove. There is a 20-minute walk around the edge of the cove to a pier. There are other options and longer walks, but given the weather, we chose the shorter walk. I always enjoy the bush with so many different varieties of trees and plenty of bird life. Amongst those birds we heard/saw here today were a keruru (wood pigeon), fantails, bellbirds and tuis.

This is an old limestone mortar kiln, a reminder of the cove's once flourishing lime industry. A sign near the site tells us that although lime mortar is now seldom used, it still holds together some of the district's oldest buildings such as Queenstown's original council, court and library buildings. It was also used for street curbing, lintels and doorsteps.

Half way down the side of the kiln is an opening. Lucy went in the front opening at the bottom, and when she saw me half way up, decided she would come join me. But no, it was too high for her!

The top of the kiln.

The pier goes out to the deeper water, passing over the pale yellow grey limestone outcrops.

Bellbird

There are these small signs along the way identifying some of the trees, which are great. But not nearly enough to educate me and often it's unclear which tree they are referring to. Possibly just a testimony to the huge gap in my knowledge of NZ native trees as they do have a diagram as well.

Pretty fungi.

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Coffee in Queenstown

We'd both been to Queenstown before but being so close, we couldn't skip the opportunity to check it out again. Queenstown is arguably the most popular NZ destination place for tourists. Naturally, it's a busy place with tourists (yes, just like us) everywhere. We decided to park up and go for a walk to find a coffee.

The waterfront (Lake Wakatipu) dominates Queenstown, and is just beautiful. The water is clear and the trees give it a natural peaceful ambience.

Parachutes colour the skies above Queenstown. Gondolas will carry you up to this point—you'll get excellent views from up here.

In the lake I spotted some of these. The NZ native scaup, aka black teal/ papango.

More images of Queenstown include buskers (one of them with an accompanying canine tenor), shops and, of course, more people.

We eventually found a place to sit and watch the world go by. We ordered coffees and sat to wait. They took so long, we were concerned that our parking metre was going to run out. On our last trip to Queenstown we ended up with a parking ticket and weren't keen to repeat the experience. So Dave went back in to change our order to "coffees to go". It appears they'd had a mini disaster inside with coffees dropped and spilt all over the floor, hence the delay. Ours were ready, but we took them as takeaways anyway. We drank them quickly and headed back to the car—there was no ticket! :)

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Lake Wakatipu

Travelling along Lake Wakatipu from Kingston towards Queenstown are lots of photo opportunities. The lake is magnificent and with snow on the mountains in the distance, too beautiful not to photograph.

It fits with nothing else, though. Just part of our travels that I wanted to share. So just a short post with a couple of pics.

Queenstown is on the shores of the lake in the distance . . . just left of the centre.

At Devils Staircase

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