On the Road: New Zealand’s South Island

Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, March 17, 2024

If an important part of your business is flying between the U.S. and New Zealand–like it is for Air New Zealand–you get pretty skilled at making the tedious, 13-hour flight from Los Angeles to Auckland go smoothly.

Part of it is the late night departure from massive Los Angeles International; it all but ensures most passengers are ready for a quiet rest within an hour or so of boarding. Next, a lovely but heavy dinner of Kiwi lamb and red wine leadens the eyelids even more.

But the really clever part of the flight plan is landing in Auckland at 6 am, or an astonishing two and a half days ahead of when you departed. That means if you leave LA on Monday night, you land in Auckland at the crack of dawn Wednesday, well fed, somewhat rested, and 6,525 miles southwest of the continental U.S.

Don’t worry, though; you’ll get that lost day back when you return.

That’s if you return because even the small slice of New Zealand’s South Island our family group recently explored held more than enough sun-splashed mountains, glacial lakes, sprawling farms–or “stations” in local parlance–and welcoming people to make our 16 day-stay too brief.

Unlike most previous trips, however, we drove little (less than 500 miles in two weeks), stayed longer in places Kiwi friends had recommended, and cooked, grilled, and ate more local food because we stayed in rental homes.

Our tour began by leaving Auckland, on the North Island, just four hours and four strong coffees after we arrived. That flight took us to Queenstown, the pearl city of the South Island, deep in the Remarkables, the well-named mountain chain that dominates the Otago region. While the city’s shoreline of big Lake Wakatipu is easily walkable, its hills will challenge a fit pack mule.

After three days of acclimation to the late summer weather and the 19-hour time difference–19 hours ahead of our native Midwest–we drove to Wanaka, a small city on the shores of another enormous lake and gateway to Mt. Aspiring national park.

We made Wanaka our home for five nights to enjoy its deeply embraced outdoor culture and to spend time with friends who had long encouraged a visit. Our cadre hiked and mountain biked its trails, tramped to the top of a mid-lake island, and most afternoons simply soaked in its warm, summer sun with a local stout or sauvignon blanc. Wanaka is a “return someday” place.

Next we headed east to Lake Tekapo, another too-big-to-take-in mountain lake, for two days of strolling along its rocky shores. We weren’t alone; bus loads of tourists celebrating Lunar New Year snapped photos of local flora and fauna.

We soon embarked on the longest, slowest drive of the trip: Lake Tekapo to a remote house on an oceanside, sheep and cattle station 90 minutes south of Christchurch, the South Island’s largest city. The jaw-dropping, cliffside drive of less than 200 miles took nearly five hours–with a lunch stop for local mussels.

The station was roughly 6,000 acres of the Banks peninsula, and home to 500 or so Angus beef cattle and almost 10 times that number of sheep. Its steep, mountainous terrain was partitioned into large paddocks for rotational grazing. The hoped-for profit, its calves and lambs, were ticketed for the expanding export market.

Well, not all of it. In three nights on the station, we savored its lamb twice.

A drive to the Christchurch airport, then a quick flight to Auckland put us back in New Zealand’s largest city for a night and urban exploration the following day. Then it was back on the big Air New Zealand bird for our return to LA where our lost day, a Tuesday, was waiting for us.

© 2024 ag comm