Andie and Alan's New Zealand, part 1

Looking down at Auckland

I have resolved to start up my old practice of keeping travel logs, just like I did the last time I graced New Zealand's shores.  It was 1986, I was 25 years old and headed to Wharton in a few months, the travel log was a paper notebook, and Ronald Reagan was President.  Who'd have thought that it would be the last of those facts for which I would be most wistful now, 31 years later???

Andie and I departed SJC on Thursday afternoon, Mar 30,  for a 9 day Spring break trip.  Andie was faux annoyed at me for not letting her skip Spanish class that afternoon.  ("I'm gonna steal ur food on the flight and you'll have nothing to eat, so there.  Ur in for a long 16 hours sir," read the text.)  The trip was long and smooth, we even made a rather short connection in Auckland with 20 minutes to spare, and arrived Saturday mid-day in Queenstown.

Saturday afternoon, shores of Lake Wakatipu

We checked into our AirBnB apartment, with a view of the lake and the "striptease" club across the alleyway (one of which is quiet at 3am, the other not so much), and spent the afternoon exploring the town, eating ice cream, and planning our short stay here.  Dinner was upscale bar food at the World Bar, where we broke out the chess set (we haven't played since Australia) and enjoyed a lively evening.

Sunday dawned early for me, waking at 5am (we gained an hour when the clocks fell back to standard time).  I stolled the quiet town for a couple of hours, then back to the apartment to get Andie and head out for breakfast.

The top of the gondola, Remarkables looking good

 Joe's Garage is one of many cool little Queenstown places, with great eggs and OK coffee.  Then it was off to the Skyline gondola, where we scoffed at the guy taking the tourist photo of us in the car, because, you know, we're skiers and we take lifts like this all the time.

From the top of the gondola we took off on the Ben Lomond trail, which traversed a short, dense forest then started a long climb up a ridge overlooking the lake.  So beautiful, even as a frigid wind kicked up.

On the way back down, I said hello to a guy wearing a t-shirt featuring the outline of a great white shark.  "Stinson?" I asked.  "No," he said, "it's from the Devil's Teeth bakery in the Outer Sunset."  That started the conversation, and we soon discovered that the couple lives in the same house that Pete Farrar, Steve Farrar and I rented in 1984!  (Now that I check streetview, I think it's actually a few doors down.  Still weird, Andie says.)  We chatted for a few minutes, then off we went.

Next adventure, the luge!  This turned out to be surprisingly fun, and afterwards we were famished.  We rushed back to town for pizza and pasta, followed by a rest and nap at the apartment.

There is a big park in town, part forest, part botanical garden, with the best-used frisbee golf course I've ever seen.  We hired a couple of discs from the shop downstairs, and set out to try our hand at this new sport.  Despite a near disaster (lost, then found, GoPro), we had a great time.  Although we did wrap it up a couple of "holes" early to skip stones and watch the sunset.

It is now Monday morning, and we enjoy cappuccinos as we get ready for breakfast and another full day in Queenstown.  We stream opening day, Giants vs. Dbacks, and Crawford just popped out with two men on.  Typical Crawford, one of us scoffs.