A Rainy Day Around Queenstown

New Zealand Travelog #8
Queenstown NZ - Tue, 9 Apr 2024, 9pm

I'm trying something different with blogging this trip to New Zealand. Instead of falling way behind as I share everything in chronological order, I'll strive to post at least one journal entry a day that's in real time. In that one I'll summarize what we've done. I'll follow up with more details from beautiful hikes when I have time to process the pics.

So, here we are on Tuesday evening. It's the end of our first full day in New Zealand. I woke up early, enjoyed the sunrise over the lake, then had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Breakfast was pretty good— and was free, another elite status benefit. Yay, elite status.

After breakfast we pulled together our gear to go out hiking for the day. Unfortunately, the nice–ish weather we had at dawn was the best weather we'd have all day. By the time we were leaving for hiking and stuff, heavy clouds had moved in, threatening rain. We pressed onward anyway, figuring, "Maybe they'll just threaten rain for several more hours."

Nope. The rain started as we were still a few miles out from the first trailhead. And it rained pretty much all day until we got back to the hotel around 3:30. Then it miraculously stopped.

Despite the rain we got at least once halfway decent hike in, at Bob's Cove on Lake Wakapitu. It wasn't the longer, more strenuous hike we wanted to do, but it was reasonable for doing in the drizzling rain. And it wound up being about 3 miles, so it's not like we totally wimped out.

We also hiked at Lake Face Creek falls. There we got pretty well soaked from the rain... and the wet underbrush. We followed the trails to the lower cascade of the falls. We tried but turned back from the part of the trail climbing to the upper falls as it was too slippery in the rain.

Once back at the hotel this afternoon we soaked in the hot tub for a bit. A few of the folks we shared the time with are fellow outdoors travelers— though only from Wellington, an hour's flight away. They cautioned us that the next several days all promise rain. We already knew that; the outlook on the weather app has been fairly grim. We may well be rained out in part or in entirety each of the next several days. That would be... disappointing.

Scenes from a Breakfast Restaurant

New Zealand Travelog #9
Queenstown NZ - Wed, 10Apr 2024, 7:30am

It's our second and last morning at the Hilton Queenstown Resort. We've enjoyed our brief stay in a two-bedroom "residence" apartment with a walk-out garden where we watched the sunrise yesterday. Yay, elite status for this nice upgrade.

Elite status also brought the benefit of complimentary breakfast. Complimentary breakfast at most hotels in the US is nothing to write home about. Often it's little more than powdered eggs, a warming dish of cheap sausage, and an assortment of stale breads. Thus when the check-in agent told us, "Continental breakfast is complimentary," and yes, she emphasized the word continental, the key word for all those sorry US breakfast buffets, I wasn't sure what to expect. I mean, which continent are they referring to? 😅



Well, the continent is not North America, because the breakfast spread my elite status got us here is better than I've found at all but a few US hotels. There's a spread of traditional Western hot breakfast foods here. And...



A spread of Asian foods at this counter, at the far end. Yesterday it was Chinese in its tilt, today it's kind of an Indian/Chinese split.



There's also a buffet of sliced meat, cheese, fruit, and yogurt.

Oh, and bread? Yeah, plenty of carbo-action here.



One thing I'm disappointed they didn't have this morning that they did yesterday was cronuts. Yes, they're multi-layed pastries, vaguely like croissants but in a ring shape, with chocolate icing. So today I had to make do with only a red velvet cupcake for breakfast-desert. 😂😋