EC-Rider Travels

Wow! What a day. For Christmas Mum gave me a helicopter ride over to the Milford Sound. All very weather dependent of course, and amazingly we woke to the most beautiful day. We headed off to the airport where we met our flying friends, an Indian family from Texas. We were then assigned our rather handsome pilot, Jeremy and taken to the most spit-spot red, white and blue helicopter and off we went. Rising up and over the hills and far away. OMG it was stunning, crystal blue lakes and snow covered mountains with ice blue glaciers – it was mind-blowingly beautiful and just the biggest treat.

After about half an hour, we landed at Milford Sound (5/6 hours drive from Queenstown), to be met by a cloud of midges (or sand-flies, as they call them here, although not a grain of sand in sight!). Perhaps this is why there is no one living here? We then boarded a boat and had a lovely two hour cruise around this glacially formed fiord. Apparently described by Rudyard Kipling as the eighth wonder of the world, it has a number of the most impressive towering rock islands coming out of dark aquamarine sea. Defying everything, rainforest trees and bushes somehow grow from the rocks and cling to their sides and these are interspersed with several impressive waterfalls. Interestingly, however there is very little other life, very few birds and apart from the odd basking fur seal (very sweet) we saw nothing else. Lovely though.

We returned, two hours later, to be met by Jeremy who then flew us back to Queenstown stopping on the way to land at the top of a mountain in deep snow. A M A Z I N G! He took photos of us and somehow by the time we got back on the chopper, no more than five minutes later, he had printed them and they were in little envelopes for us to buy! Quite clever at the top of a mountain!

Best Christmas present ever!

We then went to see a lovely friend of Tim’s called Bizz who lives in the most gorgeous old stone (quite rare) house outside Queenstown, overlooking very beautiful Lake Hayes. A gorgeous girl who has lived all over the world, including the UK when her children were at Pinewood with Arthur and Flora. I was sad not to have more time with her.

Even though Bizz was somewhat disparaging about Queenstown, we felt we should do a quick trip just to see it and to see if Mum could recognise where they stayed in 1987! Queenstown sits on the shore of glacial Lake Wakatipu, the longest lake in New Zealand and, once again, has grown beyond recognition, so we failed on this front and felt Bizz was right, there was not much to recommend it. So we returned to our little cottage, with a bottle of Oyster Bay and some rather fine olives and cheese.