TA Day 15

TA Day 15: Thursday 2 January 2025

Caples River / Greenstone River - Greenstone Car Park + Beach Street (Queenstown) - Bush Creek (Arrowtown)

It didn't take long this morning before we reached the car park. It was time to try our luck with hitching again!

So the section from here to Queenstown is an 80 km bypass around Lake Wakatipu recommended by the Te Araroa Trust. There are shuttle services you can use, but unfortunately for us, they seemed to be fully booked today.

So we came to the car park, used the toilets (not long drops!) and had some bars before sitting down at the entrance to the car park. A few cars arrived but none seemed to be leaving.

Until suddenly a camper van left!

It was two very nice French guys, who gave us a bumpy, but otherwise very pleasant life to Glenorchy. From there, we managed to get another hitch within 15 minutes or so. This time a Scottish couple, here to visit their family in New Zealand over the summer holidays.

Once they dropped us off in Queenstown, we went straight to FergBurger and waited in the queue for about half an hour. The burgers were really big! Kim, who normally doesn't like burgers, loved these. Lukas liked them too.

Then off to buy new socks before heading towards Frankton. We followed the edge of the lake, and it was so hot! After some time we had to stop and cool us off in the lake. Then we got going, but it didn't take long until we were sweating again. Since we were walking along the lake, we were hoping for some nice café to show up... Anything that would sell cold drinks and ice cream. We didn't find much, even on the map, so we headed towards McDonald's, which was nearby. Here we had some sundaes and frozen drinks and charged some electronics and finished some blog posts and scheduled for later.

We sat there for some hours, and when we were soon about to leave, guess who showed up? The German NOBO, Broder.

We talked a little, before leaving for resupply and then off towards Arrowtown.

We took another shortcut through here and passed several interesting things, like an area with plenty of fancy houses with huge gardens, lots of bunnies on and around the trail, and an interesting place called Millbrook. This is a huge privately owned place, with a golf course and all. Everything is built beautifully, and in the same style.

We passed it just before it got really dark, and then we headed into the outskirts of Arrowtown. Down a hill and then we found a nice little spot with grass in the dark which we took.

Can't wait until New Year's and all the fully booked accommodations are over.

Today's:

Distance: 25.96 km

Ascent: 525 m

Descent: 432 m

Tent nights: 8/15

Weather: Very sunny, but cloudy evening