Andy Came To Visit

Deer Park Heights

Taking advantage of Andy's car, we drove out to Deer Park Heights. Although visible across the Frankton Arm of Lake Wakatipu, it actually takes about 40 minutes to drive there. It's kind of like a zoo... but different. You can drive or walk in (driving is way preferable since it's a huge hill), and there are a bunch of different kinds of animals hanging out there. Some are enclosed by thin wire fences; most just roam around freely. And unlike any zoo that I've ever been to, they let you feed the animals. There are even feed stations where one can buy food specifically for feeding the animals.

Among other things, we saw bison, fallow deer, yaks, bison, goats, thar, llamas, ducks, and of course, sheep. Quite an eclectic collection of animals; I certainly wasn't expecting to see any llamas or yaks during my travels in New Zealand. There was a group of 3 llamas just sitting around, not enclosed by a fence, so I decided they probably weren't too dangerous. I decided to go see if I could sit with them and meandered on over, trying to look as innocent as possible. If you check out the flickr photos, you'll see that one of the llamas wasn't fooled and ran away. The other two seemed not to mind so much and let me hang out with them for a bit. I'd never seen a llama in person before and was surprised at how massive they are. They HUGE!

The park was also interesting because it had a bunch of spots where sections of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were filmed - primarily from "The Two Towers," and there was a little flyer at the entrance to the park describing all the spots and what happened in the movies at each location. I've seen all the movies, but since that amounts to over 9 hours of footage, I didn't remember a lot of the little scenes described in the flyer. Probably the most memorable scene from the movie that was filmed on the hill was where Aragorn is attacked by a warg and dragged over a rock into the rushing river below. Well that rock is here, and even though this picture doesn't show it, there's certainly no river below...just more of the hill. The river used in the film is the Kawarau river, the river that is the outflow from Lake Wakatipu; it doesn't begin until about half a mile away from where that scene was filmed. And such is the miracle of modern film making.

There's also some amazing view from the top of the hill. In one direction, Frankton and the Remarkables. In the other, a wide panorama of Lake Wakatipu. It's a pity the day wasn't a little clearer, but I suppose even the mist looks kinda cool.

Wine Tasting and Wanaka

The area Queenstown lies in, Central Otago, is famous for it's wine. Specifically it's Pinot Noir. There are probably 30-40 wineries in the area, most of which offer tastings of their latest offerings. So Andy and I spent two days exploring some of the local wineries. I pretty much know nothing about wine so I felt a bit lost among the people exclaming things like "beautifully balanced!" or "green apple on the nose, followed by some melon, pineapple, and what's that? a bit of peach. nice finish..." but it was cool to taste a lot of different types of wines. My wine consumption typically involves lots of food, loud music, boxes, and perhaps reinflating the bag to use as a pillow. So this was a nice change.

The wineries were absolutely gorgeous, as wineries generally are. Many of them also had pretty cafes where it would have been nice to kick back and enjoy a sunny afternoon. It was overcast during the days that we went, but I'm sure that they will merit another visit when summer rolls around.

We went into one winery, Gibbston Farms, and found that they were charging for tasting. Tasting fees at wineries are generally nominal and refundable upon purchase but considering that most places will let you taste for free, I have a hard time rationalizing paying to taste. So we wandered over to the Cheesery, also operated by Gibbston Farms. They let us taste their cheese for free, and it was excellent. They had a wide variety of cheeses, mostly made from sheep's milk (surprise), and Andy and I each ended up buying a block.

We continued past the wineries to Wanaka, a pretty little city near Queenstown. We ate a late lunch there and looked around the town for a bit. But with a population of 3500, there's not a whole lot to see. So our time there was pretty limited, but we did get some pretty pictures there and during the drive back.