Another 1% done!

January 26th

Queenstown to Arrowtown

Distance: 30km

Elevation: flat

Steps: 45,000

This might be a short report, even though it was a long day. At 30 km, we spent much of the walk tuned into podcasts to pass the time (a list of recommended is at the end). Broadly speaking, the route passed through suburban, commercial and industrial Queenstown before arriving at the old Shotover Bridge where the scenery took centre stage. The track did kindly take us directly to the Frankton (a Queenstown suburb) Countdown (grocery store), which made it really easy for us to top up our food supplies for this coming 5-7 day run (depending on how hard we push ourselves). There was also a conveniently located cafe right outside the Countdown, so we both got a long black and shared a caramel slice "for the trail". Yes, we are absolutely slumming it on this trip :P

From here on we followed a well integrated network of shared pedestrian/cycle trails between Q-town and A-town which took in the Shotover River, small residential communities, Lake Hayes, and Millbrook, which is a world-famous-in-New-Zealand golf resort. One of those communities had abundant fruit trees and Vaughan helped himself to raspberries and apples.

Once we left central Queenstown the trail was generally well marked with the signs below, making it easy to follow. 

Alongside Lake Hayes, the track edged along a farm, which apparently is raising white, or at least leucistic, deer. Maybe you can make them out against the ground, they're only very slightly ligher than the pale dirt.

Arrowtown has tried to retain its old gold rush era character, not sure that Kodak were around then, but ... I guess for younger Millennials and Gen Z'ers they probably feel like the same era (you can also see an advert for panning-for-gold in the background, if you squint)

We ended the day at the Fork and Tap in Arrowtown, sampling the Central Otago wine and food. The 7 piece Irish folk music band provided a relaxing soundscape to what was an indulgent way to end the day.

We're staying tonight at the Arrowtown Holiday Park. We splashed out for a cabin, since it's meant to get pretty cool tonight, and we are up in the mountains. Also, tent sites here cost an exorbitant amount, while cabins are super cheap - less than $20 separates the two. So, it was a good deal??

Also, it means we are staying here:

Podcasts we are listening to:

Levar Burton Reads (short stories read by, well, Levar! For Reading Rainbow and/or ST:TNG fans)

The We Out Here Podcast (black, brown and indigenous people in science)

Shortwave (daily science podcast from NPR)

The Happiness Lab (Yale-presented mental health)

Ologies (Alie Ward interviews with scientists, a completely different topic every week)

The Science of Birds (two guesses what it's about)

Let's Talk About Sects (a doco style series about cults)

The Anthropocene Reviewed (Rates quirky facets about the human-centred planet on a 5 star scale).