Days 15-16: Queenstown and final thoughts on New Zealand
The Skinny if you're just here for the highlights: We wrapped up our New Zealand chapter with an eventful drive to Queenstown (including Sean’s first-ever speeding ticket), a detour through peak-foliage Arrowtown, one last lake-view hike, a floating sauna / cold plunge session that really raised the bar, and said goodbye to New Zealand over fish & chips and park swings. Then, before moving on to Australia, I found myself reflecting on why New Zealand felt so unusually… human.
Scroll down for pictures.
The (eventful) drive to Queenstown
The next morning, we hit the road to our final stop of the New Zealand leg-- Queenstown. On the way, slightly fatigued by two weeks straight of driving, but typically extremely cautious, rule abiding driver boyfriend managed to get his first ever speeding ticket! Going 116kmh in a 100kmh zone (akin to 72mph in a 62mph zone), Sean told the cop that he has never gotten a speeding ticket in the US. An interesting moment in this process was that the cop asked Sean to say his name into a device. Sean asked what it was for and the cop informed him that it was a breathalyzer! Without permission and at 10 AM on a Thursday. It was interesting to witness. Luckily all that was required of us was to pay a NZD $80 (USD $40) fine online.
The morning's event did not put a damper on this stunning blue sky, sun sparkling day. The poplar trees, which may have just replaced weeping willows as my favorite tree, were just glowing the whole drive. Driving along the huge Lake Wakatipu, on which sits Queenstown, we were awed by the freshwater deep blue and turquoise adorned with and outline of peak fall colors. This lake, like many that we saw throughout New Zealand, is really interesting insofar as even though it is big and beautiful and clean, there are hardly any houses along the shoreline, which seems to mostly grant public access.
Arrowtown
Before pulling into Queenstown, we took a 20 minute detour to check out the adorable old mining town, Arrowtown, for lunch. Passing Lake Hays on the way, which actually does host some beautiful lakeside homes, the area is home to several vineyards. The fall colors in this town and on the towering upper hillsides were the best we had seen all trip. They were truly out of this world, and immersed us in that unmistakable wafting fall aroma.
We had fall inspired lunch on the patio of Provisions-- a mushroom soup with truffle foam and hazelnuts for me :) and walked around Main Street. Arrowtown reminded me of Middleburg, Virginia, if Middleburg had been dropped into the mountains and founded as a gold mining town — basically a love child between New England and Park City. It was very busy, especially with a particular group of tourists who seem to experience travel primarily through a camera lens. Lots of cute shops and a really fun, nostalgic candy store that boasted sweet treats from literally all over the world. Perusing the Swedish candy section, Sean noted "Olivia would just LOVE this."
Queenstown Hill Overlook Trail
Before checking into our hotel, we did a great 4 mile 1500 vt. ft. loop hike to get bird's-eye views of Queenstown, the lake, adjacent mountains (including Ben Lomond, which we would have loved to hike if we had more time and weren't still pretty sore from our back to back big days). The trail was woven between towering, hulky pine trees and through a fairy village and cairn corner, and at the top watched paragliders flipping over by the nearby Skyline Gondola (which we skipped on this short trip).
Queenstown
We spent that evening walking around Queenstown, which we found to be surprisingly small, but all the more charming and remarkably lively. We decided to cap off our final evening in New Zealand just the way we started-- at a pub with a couple drinks and Fish n' Chips.
Floating Sauna / Cold Plunge
The next morning, we had hoped to grab breakfast at the famous Fergbaker, but the line was reminiscent of Georgetown Cupcakes at its peak, so we opted for Bagels and a Nutella doughnut at Balls and Bangles bagel shop before heading to our floating hot cold session at Watershed Saunas. Down by the harbor on the lake the company has built two floating saunas. They are pretty massive and make for a comfortable group session with strangers. In fact, we had a wonderful time chatting with the three other groups of people, and even got what would turn out to be a game-changing recommendation from a couple of ladies for Hobart-- the Museum of Old and New Art. And actually, one of these ladies, who was from Sydney, had a son who lives in Grand Rapids! He played soccer at Aquinas College and now plays professionally in the area. Its a small world after all.
Two of the sauna walls were completely made of glass, affording us the most spectacular views of the lake to motivate us through our very hot, 85°C (185°F) sweat session. Outside the sauna, we had free reign over a cut out in the dock that revealed a cold plunge directly into the 10°C (50°F) lake, as well as a shower and bucket dump of fresh lake water. It was absolutely fantastic and left us both feeling lightheaded, but in the best way.
Final Moments
To warm back up after the final cold plunge, we went for a walk around the Queenstown Gardens and swung on the park swings to say our goodbyes to the country that treated us so well and kicked off the first leg of our big trip.
Overall thoughts on New Zealand
New Zealand-- land of waterfalls (and not just because of our remarkable Milford Sound experience; we found waterfalls nearly everywhere we ventured)-- is the closest place I have found to a country conducive to what I would consider rightly ordered living. A topic that guided much of my experience in the Perspectives program at Boston College-- rightly ordered living, at least in the simplest sense, emerges when our loves, habits, desires, relationships, work, and political life are ordered toward the things that are actually good. In other words, a life meant to be lived rather than optimized. New Zealand wasn't just idyllic, it also felt intentional.
One of the first things we noticed was the visibility and dignity of Māori culture. Throughout the country, signage appeared in both English and te reo Māori; museums and public spaces spoke openly about the country’s history and identity. New Zealand’s colonial history, like most places, is complicated, but there is a clear and ongoing effort to understand the relationship between Māori and the Crown as foundational to the country rather than incidental.
Then there was the environment, not as branding, but as integrated habit.
To name a few examples, at the airport there were donation bins for unopened items that couldn’t pass security. Biosecurity measures were taken seriously (we were very grateful we had packed brand-new hiking boots), and discussions around climate change were common and factually backed by observable reality. People spoke matter-of-factly about changing snowlines and shifting landscapes. Stewardship seemed embedded into ordinary life rather than treated as a niche or even controversial interest.
Beyond that, there was a kind of refreshing understatement to the country.
I mentioned earlier that the parliamentary buildings felt beautiful but appropriately restrained-- a reflection, perhaps, of a value system that seems to favor practicality and beauty in simplicity over spectacle. I rarely noticed overt displays of luxury or designer culture. People seemed to care more about being outside than being seen. Food emphasized local ingredients. Even packaged foods carried visible health ratings (Tim Tams did not score especially well, though this did not stop me from enjoying them). There was a pervasive, quiet sense of neighborliness. People seemed to assume responsibility for one another in small ways. Hospitality felt genuine, and even service culture reflected this; tipping was uncommon, because compensation was expected to come through wages rather than earned through performance. The prevailing aspiration seemed less about excess and more about quality. Underlying all of this was a sense that society was organized around mutual responsibility rather than individual optimization.
And perhaps some of this is structural.
New Zealand is small and geographically isolated, allowing it to remain relatively human in scale.
I kept coming back to the idea that perhaps some of what I admired about the country is simply easier to preserve at that size. There seems to be something about institutions remaining close enough to everyday life that they still feel personal rather than abstract. Once organizations become large enough that people become statistics and bureaucracy becomes self-perpetuating, something human tends to get lost. New Zealand felt, to me, like a place still holding onto that humanity.
Comments