Part 4: Remarkable Hiking, Scenery and Friends of Friends

Submitted by KTD on March 13, 2012 - 10:50am

I'M DOING WELL now. I have to admit, there was a two-day period where I felt completely overwhelmed and was not sure where I was going or what I was going to do. So I took out my thumb and after a bit of waiting, I was picked up by some people heading to Queenstown.

I wandered through town and ended up at Fergburger, a signature Queenstown hamburger joint. As it happens, the longer I'm in New Zealand the more faces I recognize. That first night in Queenstown I spent with my friend from Hong Kong who happened to be in the same place as me. We woke up in a 12-person dorm room and walked outside to a sunny farmers market. There I began talking to two brothers from Pennsylvania who were friends with the Jonas Brothers and had been on tour and on TV with them. They invited me to drive with them in their minuscule toyota up Skipper's Canyon, an old gold mining location. The canyon was beyond beautiful and the mountains ridges looked sharp as knives.

Skipper's Canyon, just north of Queenstown

That night I got in touch with a family who moved outside of Queenstown from Colorado; Sarah Gonzales, KTD's producer, knows them and hooked me up with the family. I've had a lovely time with them, hiking The Remarkables (really steep snowy/icy mountains) and overlooking one of the biggest lakes in New Zealand outside my window.

Some serious hiking in the accurately named "Remarkables"

They live on a station, a farm, with a few really nice cabins situated next to different lakes surrounded by sheep and cows. I was lucky enough to stay in one last night with a friend I met from Holland.