Today is mostly a travel day. We leave Te Anau for the 2.5 hour drive back to the Queenstown Airport. Along the way we stop for a snack of cheese and crackers overlooking Lake Wakatipu outside of Queenstown. The weather is sunny and warm. This is the last day we have a car. Dick and the Garmin did an excellent job on this journey.
The flight from Queenstown to Christchurch takes less than an hour and we are in town by 4:30. Unfortunately, Uber is unable to do pickups at the airport, so we opt for a taxi to get to our cottage just outside the CBD. We are in a residential neighborhood and the owner of the cottage resides just across the street. The cottage apparently suffered quite a bit of damage during the 2011 earthquake, and its then owner, decided to move back to Australia. Bruce and Judy decided to buy the house and instead of demolishing it, they renovated it. The cottage is one of the few remaining Victorian workers cottages (circa 1880’s) built as a part of the historical Englefield area, now known as Linwood. Additionally, there is an extensive vegetable and flower garden off the patio, and we have three chickens in the rear.
We get situated and take a walk to the grocery store to get supplies for the next several days. The store ends up being a further walk than expected, but Dick carries the groceries back.
We end the day with dinner at the local pub, Pommeroys, a quick five minute walk from the cottage.
Mary
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The drive from Te Anau to Queenstown is special with the Southern Alps off in the distance and Lake Wakatipu alongside the road for most of the trip. Massive stands of Scottish Broom line the roadway and hills and are a beautiful yellow bloom.
There are a lot of very large farms out this way – mostly for sheep, red deer, and Wapiti elk grazing. The elk were introduced to New Zealand as a gift by Teddy Roosevelt. We’ve been told that the farms are government owned. Some of the sheep flocks are massive – hundreds in large, fenced paddocks. They are good fun to watch. We were surprised to see a working dog herding one flock – he knew what he was doing!
Our flight from Queenstown to Christchurch is short, but beautiful as the route takes us over the Southern Alps. I was able to get a good view of Mt. Cook, New Zealand’s largest peak.
We have an Airbnb cottage in Linwood, one of Christchurch’s neighborhoods. It’s a Victorian ‘workers’ cottage’ built in the late 1880s and severely damaged during the quake of 2011. The current owners purchased and restored the property after the quake. BEST OF ALL – we’re a 5-minute walk from ‘Pommeroys’, the #1 rated craft-beer pub in Christchurch!
Dick