Living La Vida Loca

New Year’s Eve in New Zealand! It’s pretty cool that we got to celebrate the coming of the new year a day ahead of most of the rest of the world….but as busy as Queenstown is I think most of the rest of the world is here! We decided that instead of following the crowds all day in preparation for festivities at night, we’d have what turned out to be an action-packed day that included hiking, pizza and “brewing”, a leap of faith (to be explained), a scenic cruise, and a quiet ushering in of the next 365 days of the calendar.

We decided to follow one of many recommendations of scenic day hikes to wander through wildflowers and meander on a track that follows a river of a color rarely seen elsewhere. The Gibbston River Trail wanders from winery to winery with viewpoints of the river of the same name. While the queue was too long to do wine tasting at the end of our walk, it was well worth the couple of hours for the beautiful landscape.

We definitely worked up an appetite post-walk and had hoped that the Peregrine Winery where we started would offer a tasting and some chow. No such luck. The tastings apparently required a reservation (high season) or a walk-in wait our stomachs couldn’t manage…and there wasn’t any food to be had. With recommendation from locals we ended up a short drive away at a lovely brew stop that had great vegetarian nachos and thin crust pizza – and I got my first “shandy” of the trip. For the uninitiated, a shandy (or a “clara” in Spain) is a blend of a pale ale and either sprite or lemonade. It’s for us who don’t really like the taste of straight beer but want the buzz 🙂

On our way to our morning hike we’d passed a well-known bungy jump experience – the Kawarau Bridge Bungy – apparently founded by AJ Hackett who originated this extreme sport in New Zealand. He made a bungy jump from the Eiffel Tower in 1987 and founded the first commercial bungy site in 1988. Go figure. In any case, brother Noah mentioned as we passed the jump site that he’d considered jumping when planning this trip but hadn’t committed to it. Sure enough, as we were passing the bridge again, Noah said he’d really like to do it! How could we NOT indulge him? All I can say is that (as I have always known), Noah is a delightful maniac at heart, and I’m not sure if it was more thrilling and entertaining to watch him jump than it was for him to do it!

We headed back to Queenstown after many kudos and high-fives for Noah. Since it was New Year’s Eve I’d booked us a 90-minute boat cruise around Lake Wakatipu – this is the lake that Queenstown proper sits on. The cruise was on a vintage steamer, the TSS Earnslaw. Launched in 1912, the TSS Earnslaw is believed to be the only coal-fired passenger-carrying vessel still operating in the southern hemisphere. When Andrew and I visited Queenstown a few years ago we did take this ship across to the Walter Peak High Country Farm that serves a lovely meal, allows you to tour their gardens and visit animals, but this time we just did the round trip cruise which was relaxing and very scenic.

This was definitely a very full day with a lot of different experiences – something for everybody. Since it was New Year’s Eve and Queenstown was jammed with merrymakers, us “seniors” decided to head home, make a lovely dinner and chillax. We were able to catch a few fireworks from our back porch, and it was really lovely to usher in 2023 with such dear family and friends!