Breakfast buffet spread
Starting off the day early at 6am, I am reassured that my early rise is worth it for 2 reasons: A buffet breakfast waiting for us downstairs at the Crowne Plaza Queenstown as well as a tour of Milford Sound. It’s early, and since my stomach is still on Sydney time, it thinks it’s 4am. And considering food doesn’t touch my stomach until about 10 or 11am it’s a shock. But my eyes and brain takes over at the sight of the food. I love hotel bacon, it seems to always be reliably good and I always find room for some creamy scrambled eggs. What has me in raptures (aside from the Kiwifruit juice, like a delicious Kiwi flavoured nectar) are the cherries. Otago (the region in which Queenstown lies) is said to produce some of the world’s best cherries, along with Pinot Noir. Biting into a sweet, meaty cherry I succumb to pleasure and my stomach kicks in. Yes it approves of these cherries at 4am.
Milford Sound was one of those places that everyone, and I mean everyone recommended that we see. A much lauded and visited site (over half a million visitors a year), Rudyard Kipling called it the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. The fjord is a vast area of mountains shaped over the many years by glaciers and the best way to see its spectacular beauty was by a cruise. When we first contemplated doing it, we had intended to drive there as we had rented a car but the early hour start (we’d have to leave at 6.30am) and my husband’s tiredness convinced us otherwise so we booked with Mitre Peak cruises. Our guide Jessie is a friendly and professional guide and the coach picks us up at 6.30am outside the hotel. It’s still dark and remains so until after 7.15am. Yes we are very glad we didn’t drive. One thing that we are told is that the main hazard driving in New Zealand is the spectacular view and that people get in accidents when they take their eyes off the road and gaze at the view. We’re booked to fly back with the Scenic Plane company provided weather permits. After all, Milford Sound is also known as the wettest inhabited place in New Zealand.
The scenery along the way
Little waterfalls on cliff faces
The coach drives through little townships and makes it way to Te Anau, the seaside town on the way to Milford Sound. We learn all about NZ from Jessie on the way. Things such as they have as many sheep as Australia has people (20 million) but New Zealand only has 4 million people which makes it 5 sheep per person. The North Island is more populated with 3 million of the population while the South island has 1 million. And for some unknown reason NZ is devoid of all poisonous creatures. There are no snakes or poisonous spiders or anything likely to kill you while Australia, well let’s just say we have plenty. How they managed it I have no idea. He tells us all about Maori legends, some Maori words and the importance of Maori culture to New Zealanders and the Waitangi treaty that established a relationship between the Maoris and European settlers. We have to admit it’s much more enjoyable to travel like this in the comfort of a coach with some great commentary than the drive yourself to Milford Sound, especially given the very winding roads and time spent driving.
Cheese and onion sandwich
Afghan cookie
Ginger slice
Past spectacular vistas, at Te Anau we pick up some things for lunch, a cheese and onion sandwich (which tastes a little like pizza), an Afghan biscuit that I bought more for the name but it actually turns out to be a delicious chocolate biscuit with oatmeal interspersed throughout it with a cupcake like quality via the smear of icing on top. My husband gets a ginger slice which is deliciously gingery.
Mirror Lakes
We make our way towards Milford sound, through tunnels dug through mountains, past red algae covered rocks (only 1 of 2 types of algae that can live outside water) and stop by Mirror lakes, which if you gaze into them with polarised sunglasses (a tip from our guide), a whole underwater world opens up. Milford Sound is the wettest place on earth raining 200 days a year with an annual rainfall of 7 metres, yes it’s wet and it’s wet today with rain falling from the sky constantly.
Seal colony-can you spot the seals?
Enormous waterfalls
‘
Boat getting right close to the base of the waterfall
4.5 hours later we get to Milford Sound and board the boat. The cruise meanders down Milford Sound showing us spectacular sheer cliff faces and sights and two of the highlights for me, the seal colony including a baby seal showing off to its watchful mum at the front and the amazing waterfalls. As it’s raining, the falls are gushing down. The cliffs are as high as 1200 metres (almost 4,000feet) so there’s a long way down for the water to travel. Yesterday when there was no rain, it was said to be barely a trickle. Today the rain is constant and the boat goes right up to the edge of the waterfall. The effect is amazing, like being in a special effects movie when a huge gush of water is raining right on top of you with a thunderous noise above you.
We make it back and we enquire whether we can fly but as we suspect it’s bad news and the flights have been canceled due to the weather. We understand as we’d been warned about this before. We go back to the coach and help ourselves to the snacks provided and watch the movie The World’s Fastest Indian with Anthony Hopkins who plays New Zealander Burt Munro (albeit with a Welsh accent and not a Kiwi one) who breaks the land speed title for motorcycles under-1000cc. And so ended our cruise to the stunningly beautiful Eighth Wonder of the World. And big thanks to Mitre Peak Cruises who provided our travel for the day.
We stop off briefly at Te Anau and most people buy ice creams from the Deep South ice cream section. We order Kiwifruit yogurt and Hokey Pokey which remind me of Clotted Cream ice creams I’d had in the UK.
Another fabulous place in downtown Queenstown was the Vesta cafe where we stopped off for a bit of shopping (some gorgeous embossed suede cushions) as well as a grilled cheese toastie, said to be the best in the land. Vesta is in Queenstown’s oldest house and features vintage 1800s wallpapers, peeled back so that you can see the layers. It’s a design store, clothing shop and cafe.
Things to buy, loved these little guys
Fabulous lamp
The peeling wallpaper and lovely things to buy
Cheese toastie $2.50NZD
I was curious, after all isn’t a cheese toastie the same everywhere? Apparently not – either there is some magic they have woven or perhaps it’s the cheese in it but the toastie is worth a detour in itself.
Glasshouse facing the beach where you can sit and eat. Love the stump table, it’s so Twin Peaks!
Bambi!
Crowne Plaza Queenstown
93 Beach Street
Queenstown Town Centre, Otago, New Zealand
+64 3 442 7800
http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/cp/660/en/hd/zqnbs
NQN and Mr NQN stayed as guests of the Crowne Plaza Queenstown
Mitre Peak Cruises
MItre Peak cruises does daily coach-cruise-fly or coach-cruise-coach trips to MIlford Sound. They can pick you up from your hotel in Queenstown or Te Anau and lunch can be ordered and some snacks are provided.
NQN and Mr NQN traveled to Milford Sound courtesy of Mitre Peak Cruises
Vesta Cafe
Williams Cottage, Marine Parade,Queenstown, New Zealand
Tel: +64 (03)442-5687
Open Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
What is NQN up to now?
NQN on Facebook
RSS
29 Comments | Add your own
Spectacular scenery! I’ll have to visit one day. The Fastest Indian was filmed 45 minutes from my house.
Wow, Lorraine: what a beautiful place!!! Lovely nature in its purest forme!!! Lovely pictures!! It looks that you had an awesome time!!!
That is some seriously amazing scenery!
It was cornflakes in the Afghan or at least it should have been. They’re my favourite biscuit.
We toured the South Island on our honeymoon but the furthest south we were able to fit in was Wanaka.
Wow, it’s so beautiful there. I didn’t know that fact about the lack of poisonous animals – that IS really odd!
Even with an overcast sky it’s still amazingly spectacular. I still believe that NZ is the most beautiful country in the world
And I didn’t know you were a Twin Peaks fan. My husband’s been trying to get me to watch it for ages.. he even drove me out to see where it was filmed, haha
Early morning rises are torture but it all looks so worth it! Thank you for sharing NZ with us!
Thank you for sharing these pictures! I could never forget the unique beauty of Milford Sound. We were so fortunate to go after it has just stopped raining and through each waterfall we found a rainbow – it was amazing!
So pretty isn’t it. Your photos are great
Those seals are adorable – and very camouflaged!
Me and my boyfriend decided we’re going back to the South Island this year but we’re going up north this time.
If I’m ever in Australia, let me tell you, YOU are taking me out to eat! Everything here looks delicious.
Wow, it’s so beautiful. I’ve never been to NZ but this makes me want to book a trip asap!
Gorgeous photos! Like 5 star foodie, we we so lucky to do our trip after a full night of pouring rain, it was spectacular! We drove ourselves, it was a beautiful drive, not as scary as they make it sound!
great photos – milford sound is somwhere I would definitely like to visit one day
I love the lamp. You’ve got some great photos of Milford Sound in spite of the weather. The cheese toastie sounds like the perfect end to a wet day.
I still remember Milford Sound from school projects. Would love to visit one day. And I want that wall unit at Vesta cafe!
The beauty of New Zealand never fails to stun me. When they finally invent teleportation or some sort of mass transit gate system, it’ll be the first place I visit. I spotted seals too!
And I’d totally get up at 6am every day if I knew that breakfast was waiting for me. It’s by far the best breakfast buffet I’ve seen in years.
usually the only thing that gets me out of bed is the prospect of breakfast.
i love the scenic shots interspersed among the food porn.
Wow, it looks so amazing and pretty!
Amazing wilderness photos!
Ummm… Sorry I’ve got to ask, what’s a cheese toastie? Is it just a grilled cheese sandwich?
Hi NQN, I love your blog and read it every day. As a girl from Southland, I have point out that your cheese toastie is actually called a cheese roll. They are a south island delicacy and there is often debate about how to make the best one. Between the cheese rolls and deep south hokey pokey I feel homesick! So glad you enjoyed our beautiful part of nz.
cheese rolls are fabulous! Let me know if you want the recipe. You should also check out Ladies, a Plate, a fabulous book filled with traditional NZ baking recipes. it has the best afghan recipe I have ever made in it!
What a lovely trip! NZ has some gorgeous places to visit
That breakfast spread looks superb! Milford Sound was enjoyable, but not quite what I epxected. I weas glad I was not driving on those widy roads – I honestly thought that our coach was going to fly off the edge a number of times.
Hi Barbara-It was! It’s definitely worth a visit
Oh how very cool!
Hi Sophie-It’s amazing, really and lovely and untouched too. We had a great time, thankyou!
Hi Cappucino-Indeed it was!
Hi aussiehen-Oh really? I must make some of these. Ah well I can definitely recommend a return trip to see Queenstown
Hi anna-I know, it’s the funniest thing isn’t it! How did they manage it?
Hi Kathy-I can believe that really
I’m a huge Twin Peaks/David Lynch fan. I watched until the very end. Oh wow, you went to where they filmed it? 
How exciting! I love dark, mysterious tv series 
Hi Maria -Hehe I felt like it bbut when you’re greeted with that it’s all worth it
you’re welcome! 
Hi 5 Star Foodie-You’re welcome!
Oh how fabulous and great timing, you were very lucky! And a rainbow too! 
Hi Esz-Thankyou!
I know, I had to have a good look to see them myself 
I’d love to go back and explore the North Island 
Hi maris-Haha cool!
Hi Christie-It took me so long to get there but once I was there I didn’t want to leave
Hi Tiffany-Thankyou!
Oh wow, you are brave. I was feeling a bit odd after all the twists and turns 
Hi Renee-It’s stunning. If you ever get the opportunity I definitely recommend it
Hi Arwen-I know, how much did I want to take it back with me
Oh that toastie was sooo good….
Hi belle-My husband was lucky enough to go there on a school excursion! Lucky bugger
Me too! 
Hi Angela-haha yes! It’s a bit far from you but if you ever make it the 24 hour trip to Australia, NZ isn’t far away!
Oh the cherries, yes I still dream about the cherries…
Hi grace-Haha yes the promise of food! Always the way to get my attention
Thanks! 
I luvs me my food porn!
Hi Bec-It was stunning indeed!
Hi Kevin-Thankyou!
Hi KatyBelle-Yes althoguh it’s using just one slice of bread
Hi mk-Thankyou ao much !
Ah yes, that’s right it’s a cheese roll although I always think of a roll with cheese on top when I think of a cheese roll 
I can imagine that it would be quite a topic of debate 
We enjoyed it so much!
Hi tammy -I would love the recipe! Thankyou
Sounds like a great cookbook. I’ll try and get a hold of it-thanks! 
Hi Alexandra-It’s amazingly gorgeous I have to say
Hi Cakelaw-It was pretty cool! Yes me too, it was really curvy! Eeek, how scary for you!
How impressive photos! New Zealand is really beautiful! I couldn’t resist the croissants on the breakfast table.
This all looks amazing!!
Hi Talita-Thanks, it is an amazing country
Hehe I know, unlimited baked goods are very tempting!
Hi misaur23-It was indeed!
A bit late but… yes, afghan’s are definitely made with cornflakes (which reminds me, I need to beg my Mum to make me some). Also, Anthony Hopkin’s accent in The World’s Fastest Indian was actually very close to Burt’s real accent. A lot of Soutlanders speak with a bit of a Scottish lilt to their voice as so many Scots settled there. It’s unusual, but his family gave it the thumbs up!
Post a Comment