Over the crown range
Saturday 13th April 2019
Queenstown
Our plan to avoid the wet roads worked seamlessly, we spent all of Wednesday waiting out the heavy rain and welcomed the sun back as expected on Thursday morning. By this stage, the procedure of strapping and unstrapping our bags to and off of the bike became second nature. So, we duly packed the bike solid once more after tidying our Wanaka cabin up and drying the bike before departure. Rather than heading South West toward Queenstown, I decided to do a bit of off-road trail riding to discover some of what the Mount Aspiring National Park had to offer. Our little detour certainly proved fruitful with pristine nature and gold mountain vistas as far as the eye could see. After an hour of adventuring our stomachs started to rumble and their owners started to grumble, so we rode back in to Wanaka to fuel our bodies up before the alpine ride to Queenstown, a ride that would take us through the famous mountain group dubbed the Crown Range.
With our tanks full, we pointed our noses South once again toward the famed lakeside activity hub of Queenstown. There was an option for us to take the highway ‘6’ out of Wanaka, but we opted for the mountain pass that cut through and over the Crown Range, an experience that I will never forget. This drive was to be one of the shortest thus far, only an hour and a quarter on Google maps (I tended to be enjoying my bike enough that we generally took fifteen percent off to calculate our total time taken when using arrival prediction times), with this in mind we tried to draw out the drive some and decided on a detour through Arrowtown, going by a recommendation that a lovely cafe owner gave us after kindly obliging when I asked if I could sit at their dusty in-house piano to have a quick play while we had our morning coffee just out of Wanaka.
Much of the road to and beyond the ski resort town of Cardrona was simply beautiful flatland, dissecting the great monuments of Mount Cardrona and Mount Pisa that towered over our flanks. Once we passed through Cardrona we reached what is known as the Crown Range Summit, just before the last stretch of the Crown Range Road. Perched at the top of the mountains was a dusty side track off the road where people could stop their vehicles and soak in what lay before them. A breathtaking panorama of this alpine playground, all of Queenstown and it’s host lake Wakatipu came into view from our dusty crow’s nest, more than twenty five kilometres away. We were graced with a beautiful sunny day today which accentuated this magical moment. A few mandatory photos and silent thought-provoking meditations later, and we started our descent. What a ride this was; from the viewpoint at the Crown Range Summit the road was a long serpentine track down the mountain, motorbike heaven. We tilted and swayed down the side of the mountain with a sharp drop on one side and giant gold encrusted earth imposingly pushing us down from the other. This was easily the most enjoyable road I have ever experienced.
At the bottom of the road we stopped to excitedly check in with each other about how awesome that was, just a reassurance that one saw what the other saw, not difficult considering there is barely a two centimetre distance between our heads. I glanced at the maps to ensure that we remained on the right track, our turn to Arrowtown was close. This area of New Zealand experienced what is known as the Central Otago Gold Rush in the 1860s, Arrowtown was one of the protagonist towns in this era as it lies along the banks of the Arrow River. Now a larger autonomous village that was reminiscent of a mountainside borough in the old west; bright green fir trees gave way to country style architecture, a quaint place to say the least. We did not stop in Arrowtown but slowly cruised through to our final destination of Queenstown. Another beautiful ride, this time we drove past the Coronet Peak on a route that prospectors had used to cart their wares to Queenstown.
On arrival to the city, we drove straight to our Airbnb to dump our bags, cuddle the in-house legend cat ‘Mischief’ and jump back out explore the city. It has a fantastic atmosphere about it, albeit swarming with backpackers and tourists who are all looking to experience one of the myriad activities that Queenstown prides itself on providing. We took a Gondola up the Ben Lomond mountainside and hiked through the forest back down to the town. The sunny lawn park that hugged the wharf at the centre of town was bustling with market goers and musical talent, excellent food and drink to be had all round, this all enhanced by the magnificent mountain-studded lake Wakatipu, which featured in every view.