February 16 - Wanaka to Queensown - 79 km

Up early to a clear blue perfect day.  Two days ago we went over the lowest mountain pass (Haast) - today we're tackling the Crown Saddle, the highest.

Another good start at 0715 and easy grades for the first 40 km.  We pulled into the Cardrona Hotel at 09:00 and ran into our first problem - it didn't open until 10:00! This is probably one of the most popular scenes ever photographed in NZ.  Unfortunately, it makes the hotel look like a grotty old mess.  The facade is decrepit, but behind it is a very quaint and comfortable looking hotel.  If Laura and I had known about it earlier, we would have arrived the previous day and stayed there instead of Wanaka.

After more gentle slope and a real grunt up the last 200 vertical meters we arrived at the Crown Saddle - 1076 meters above sea level, the highest sealed road in New Zealand.  Here is a view of the valley looking toward Queenstown, an interesting plant at the top (the dark green patch in the valley behind is somebody's homestead).  

Looking at the view reminded me of an interesting fact.  It appears that this is sub-alpine or full 

alpine meaow.  This elevation (1076 meters) is actually about 50 meters lower than the elevation of the Martin cabin at Sulphurous Lake (1132), BC, where we are still well below the treeline.  It also gets a lot colder at Sulphurous Lake (they don't get -40 C here).

Here's Laura starting down the big hill towards Queenstown.  They were working on the road, 

resulting in a lot of loose gravel so we kept our speeds down.  

The hill flattened out into a bit of a plateau and then there was the final dip down something called the Zigzags.  Here's Laura starting down them.  You can see how close they are together, and very steep.  

At the top of Crown Saddle we spoke to some local cyclists who suggested we take a side trip to Arrowtown to grab something at the Arrowtown Bakery.  Sounded good, so away we went.  Here's the main street of Arrowtown - a former gold mining town now mining tourists pockets.  Quaint.

Into Queenstown looking for a place to stay.  The whole town is full of backpacker and budget places (in addition to the full range of regular accommodation).  Here's the view from our (budget) 

motel. with a parasailer on final approach to a landing on the schoolyard.  The sky was literaly crawling with parasailers flying off of the hill behind us.  They almost need air traffic control.

The last picture is of the lake.  Queenstown is very busy, fairly large and has a huge summer and winter (skiing) tourist trade.  We'll be here for a couple of days doing the tourist thing - Milford Sound bus tour tomorrow.

 Here's some entries in the 'interesting sign' contest.  We saw the first one early in the climb (it was a cause for concern), the second on the climb (OK - I admit I turned the sign down for the photo).  The last one was on the zigzags - and they meant it!.