Ups and Downs

After a couple of nights at Lake Takapoe we visited Mt Cook. There's not a lot to say really, Mt Cook is a big mountain. Extract almost any adjectives from the list in the last blog and apply to any geographical features.


Most of the area at the foot is owned by the grey, forbidding, ugly and expensive Hermitage Hotel. The only independent business is the Old Mountaineers Cafe which has wonderful pictures of the early days of NZ mountaineering. It also tells the story of the first ascent of Cook which is illuminating.

In the early years of the 20th Century a group of British climbers decided it was time to make the first ascent in the name of Queen and Empire. A party was assembled and the long trip made to NZ. Since they had to come by boat, and even now Mt Cook is fairly inaccessible, it must have taken months but in due course a camp was set up ready for the assault. The day before the climb three local Kiwi lads slipped up to the top without telling anyone, left a flag and descended quietly. Mt Cook is claimed for New Zealand not the British Empire. One very small nail extracted from the Imperial edifice in a very New Zealandish sort of way. I can imagine a shy, modest but satisfied smile spreading across the two islands.

Mt Cook also marks the end of the Tasmin Glacier which gets very little press compared with its partners, the Franz Josef and the Fox. Probably this is because it ends in what looks like an explosion in a gravel pit. Not pretty blue green ice caves, just a massive wall of gravel beneath which are hundreds of feet of ice. And just to completely blow Tasman's chances of becoming a major tourist site, the melt water fails to form a pretty blue lake but instead looks like industrial effluent.

We climbed up to see it anyway on an exceptionally hot day and, because it was so close, forgot to take water. When we arrived, tired and thirsty but pleased with ourselves, we found a group of Japanese old age pensioners just pouring away the last of their unwanted drinking water as they set off back down to the car park. Rather a Mt Cook sort of experience.

We spent the night in Omarama. It mention this just as a warning to anyone visiting NZ. The camp site was very clean and tidy but the 'town' is best forgotten. If it wants a name for itself (as most small towns seem to: 'Town of Trees' - in a country with billions of them; 'Town of Lights' - so now they have electricity), I'd suggest 'Town whose name is almost a palindrome'. Assuming of course that 'Hot Sweaty Armpit' is already taken.

The logical next stop would be Queenstown but as we approached, a plethora of signs (and the Lonely Planet Guide) made it clear that this was a town for sailing, kayaking, rafting, jet skiing, water skiing, para-gliding, wind surfing, heli-gliding, jet boating and everything else suitable for lithe, tanned and, especially, young bodies. And worse was to come. It's a big centre for bungy jumping. To slightly modify P G Wodehouse, "There is enough pain and suffering in the world without attaching elastic bands to your feet and falling off bridges". So we went to Arrowtown instead.

As you enter it, Arrowtown looks like everything Queenstown is not. Rather superior bungalows in big well kept gardens, all full of roses, dahlia and every sort of European as well as NZ flower. There were lots of aliums so you knew it was posh. Tree lined streets gave shade and everything was calm and orderly. Not a para-glider in sight but instead, at the Arrowtown Bowling Club, elderly white attired ladies and gentlemen (you wouldn't dream of just calling them 'women and men') played bowls with restrained passion. The click of wood on wood, followed I imagined by a G+T in the club house.

And that is what three quarters of the town is like. The last quarter is 'historic main street'. The original town was built in the 19th Century and must have originally looked like a small version of the towns you see in westerns. The single street wouldn't have been wide enough for a gun fight (fortunately Kiwi's don't do that sort of thing) and many of the painted wooden buildings seems slightly smaller than you would expect but, still, here they are: the old post office, the post master's house, the stables, the village store with their logos intact. Except that the livery stable sells designer clothes, the village store has posh jewellery and the post master's house is 'one of the best two restaurants in New Zealand'.

When we last visited, fifteen years ago, being one of the best two restaurants in NZ was no great accolade. If you had a chip fryer and a fridge of frozen mutton chops you were in with a chance. Now food is big to the extent that the opinion about the restaurant was that of the New York Times food critic! They came to Arrowtown!

Despite sneering at the unreality of it all, we did stay and have a coffee. And then discovered there was a cinema showing 'Cosami' which is an excellent Italian movie so we stayed. The Cinema was as unreal as the rest of the town but was so 'life-style' that it reached a new level. First it has only seven rows of seats, six seats per row. The seat are big enough for two people and you sink into them. You can stretch your legs out full length. There is silent air conditioning but, just in case, there is an intermission when you can buy a glass of chilled wine with a choice of New Zealand cheeses to nibble or a superior organic ice-cream.

Walking back through the dark, silent streets to our camp-site we passed a house with a sign that read "Arrowtown Stress Management Consultancy". I kid you not.