Queenstown, take two

I need to be careful or I might actually fall in love. No, not with the woman who makes my two espressos every morning at the little hostel with the best coffee in town, but with Queenstown itself.

She is from Sydney, 28, childfree and happy (with it), is a full time globetrotter who has somehow washed up in Queenstown. She is supposedly heading on to Southeast Asia at some point, where life is easier, she says. At the same time, she is looking for a flatmate because life here is also absurdly expensive. Her German roommate just moved out. With an Australian passport, she can stay here as long as she likes, and she makes coffee from latin america beans roasted in New Zealand. The best of both worlds, as she always points out.

The coffee is excellent, and so are the conversations with her. We clicked immediately. She likes going out, which is also expensive here, and a night out can easily cost a small fortune. Cue the wink. ‘I’m too old for this shit,’ i shoot back with a smile. She’s also the one who told me where the term hangover is supposed to come from. She says that every time she goes partying, the next day is completely useless and she can barely do more than show up to work. She also thinks New Zealanders are much nicer than her fellow Australians. Naturally, she has an explanation for that too. The towns here are much smaller, and people in small towns are friendlier anyway. The scenery is better, and besides, Queensland is like Texas, you know? I have mentioned before that I love the Sydney accent, haven’t I?

If I stay here much longer, it could get dangerous. They are looking for bartenders and kitchen hands here, and I could do that. To my own annoyance, I am also getting more work than I ever intended. So I have been stuck in town for the last two days instead of going on another hike. Time is slipping away. I really need to do something about that. I was thinking maybe three to five hours of work a week, not eight hours every day. To be fair, my ankles are doing much better again, but the blisters on my toes are still nagging a little. Nothing dramatic, but enough to count as a reason not to go anywhere. And if you are looking for a reason, you can always find an excuse. That, and new shoes, that, and the fact that I am running out of time. So tomorrow, with a heavy heart, I will leave Queenstown by bus.

No Rees Track. The Dart is closed as well. Makes sense, if you know what that means. I also did not run into Jason Momoa, by the way. According to one bus driver, he owns land somewhere around here. To be honest, I really do think it is beautiful here. In another life, I might simply stay. But I am being pulled onward. New Zealand is still so big, there is still so much to see, an entire island ahead of me. Are people everywhere this friendly, this kind, this polite? I still need to find out.

I could go to Dunedin, where the only mainland albatross colony in the world nests, and then head back to Christchurch to visit the Antarctic museum. That was one of the departure points for British expeditions to the Pole. Or I could dig even deeper into Māori stories, because here in Queenstown one particular story keeps surfacing again and again.

It goes something like this. Long ago, at Whakatipu Waimāori, today’s Lake Wakatipu, young women held swimming contests in the lake, but none of them ever made it all the way across. Hākitekura, the daughter of the Kāti Māmoe rangatira Tuwiriroa, watched from what is now Ben Lomond, took dry raupō fibres and a kauati, a fire drill, and set out before sunrise. She steered by two peaks on the far side of the lake, today known as Cecil Peak and Walter Peak, which in the tradition are called Kā Kamu a Hākitekura, roughly the shining or glimmering Hākitekura saw. Interestingly enough, those are the same peaks behind which I photographed the aurora. At the shore near Te Ahi o Hākitekura, present day Refuge Point, she came ashore and lit a fire. When her father saw the flickering light, he sent a waka to bring her back.

And the area around the lake remained important to Māori for another reason too, because from here old trails led to precious pounamu, the green stone, greenstone or jade, found among other places near the upper Dart River. For Māori, pounamu is a taonga, a treasure, a sacred stone full of mana and mauri. When you run your hand over such a stone, as you can do here in town, it often expresses connection, respect and remembrance. You enter into a relationship with the wairua and mauri of the stone, and the touch can carry a sense of whanaungatanga, of connectedness. Not a rigid meaning, more something shaped by the place and the tikanga around it.

It is enchanting here. The mix of deciduous trees in their autumn colours and evergreens gives the town something very much its own. The city centre is basically one big mall, but that is not so bad if you know where to go, or if you have been given good tips. There are plenty of galleries too, with some genuinely unusual art. The gardens are lovely, you can play frisbee golf, there are proper baskets for it, and by the lake you can do pretty much anything anyway: swim, paddle, ride a motorboat, shoot through the water on some modern dive gadget, or simply lie there and stare at nature, completely free of charge.

And then there is that coffee again. If I am not careful, I might actually fall for this town and just stay. And that is exactly the last thing I need right now. So tomorrow I am moving on to Franz Josef. The name does not exactly fill me with springtime feelings. Anyway.

*As for hangover: the story that the term came from poor people in Victorian England who, when drunk, would sleep slumped over a rope, the so called two penny hangover, may well be wrong. Still funny, though.