January 23 Moving Day (Day 118)
We woke to a cloudy drizzly day, great for a travel day. We’re moving to Riverton, way down on the south end of the South Island, an over 6 hour drive down the center of the island! We are going to go very close to Queenstown, the “Adventure Capital” of NZ so we decided we’ll stop to check it out. But first we drove through the small town of Cromwell, Otago District. Otago is becoming famous for its wineries and apparently its stone fruit orchards as well, as advertised by this giant sculpture! The peach, apricot and nectarine are joined by a pear, rounding out the fruit salad around Cromwell.
From this angle it looks like one of the colorful flightless birds around NZ!
We started up a mountain pass along a rushing river and stopped at a viewing platform at Roaring Meg. Roaring Meg is a turbulent stream that drives a hydro-electric power station and merges with the Kawarau River, which runs between the towns of Cromwell and Queenstown.
You can see the power station on the right, with the stream flowing out to the river.
We continued up and over the pass and down into Queenstown, seeing a line of cars for several kilometers leaving town! No matter what season, Queenstown is always busy it seems. We drove around looking for a parking space and finally found one about a 20 minute walk into town! Our destination was Fergburger! We had to try the iconic burgers! We figured out that it’s best to call in your order by phone rather than stand in line to order, then wait in line to pick up your burgers, especially on an unseasonably cold windy day like today! By the time we reached the restaurant we had only a 5 minute wait. They have very limited seating, so we headed outside to try and find a spot out of the wind to consume our burgers. Robert got the “Sweet Bambi” venison burger, while I opted for the “Ferg-lafel”, the falafel burger (I’ve had too much lamb lately – can you believe it!!).
They are huge and delicious. I couldn’t finish mine and wrapped it up for later!
We walked around the lakefront back towards the car to finish our long driving day, we still had about 3 hours drive to Riverton!
A little bit of view at the lakefront. Queenstown is surrounded by mountains.