Hiking around Queenstown...

"We will never try an unguided day hike again." Tiffany and I need to repeat those words over and over again to ourselves, as today we managed to get lost for the umpteenth time on what was supposed to be a well-marked trail. But before getting to that, it is necessary to set the scene.

We've moved hotels, from an ordinary place in Queenstown proper, to a Shangri-La called Punatapu located in the hills 12 kilometers outside of town. We feel sort of like we have been transported to a tiny, secluded Swiss village in the mountains, but with a modernist New Zealand touch. We're staying in a massive room, known as "The Barn". With a pretty pool overlooking the mountains and impeccably decorated chalets surrounding a small, stone courtyard, we feel a bit like we've reached Nirvana. It's close enough to Queenstown to make all activities there easily accessible, yet far enough away to provide total seclusion. With a perfect nighttime sky filled with stars, this quaint mountain lodge just oozes honeymoon charm. Rooms are left unlocked here, which to us seems to perfectly sum up this magical place.

But back to the hiking. The lodge is located a mere kilometer from two of Queenstown's premier day-hikes, and we decided to try them both. Now, Tiffany and I have become all too accustomed to getting lost on trails intended to be moron-proof - for example, we turned a simple 9 kilometer hike in the Daan Viljaan park outside of Windhoek, Namibia into a 17 kilometer race against time which had us getting out of the park just before sunset and the closure of the gates for the evening (we would have had to sleep among the baboons). This time we managed to pull another unfortunate couple into our web misdirection. And they thought they'd have a quiet, peaceful weekend of hiking in the mountains outside of Queenstown!

The hike began innocuously enough, as we seemed to be tracking the path to perfection for the first couple of hours. We realized we had lost the trail when it turned from a gravel path to a barbed-wire fence descending rapidly through the thicket down a mountainside. We had done it again, however, this time we had absolutely no idea how to extricate ourselves from the self-imposed predicament. We spotted some sheep in the distance looking at us with extreme curiosity (human beings didn't frequent these parts), and a lake below which blocked our path at the bottom of the mountain. To top things off, we continued to brush up against the New Zealand Prickly Bush (at least that was our name for it), as there was no longer a cleared path for us to follow.

Just when things looked their bleakest, we spotted the aforementioned unfortunate couple hiking in the distance on the other side of the lake (a.k.a., the correct side of the lake). "Where are we?" Tiffany barked across the once-peaceful lake, hoping the couple was within earshot. This strange and somewhat metaphysical inquiry certainly put an end to the silent tranquility of their day. Stunned, and probably a bit miffed at the misfortune of having met us at the trailhead hours earlier, they called back "I don't know, but it looks like there may be an old cattle path up the mountainside!" We did an about-face, found the path described by the couple, and made our way towards the edge of the lake, all the while trying to rationalize how it was not our fault that we got lost every time we attempted a hike without a guide (the path was unmarked, the signs were unclear, etc.). Lo and behold, we finally emerged at a clearing which allowed us to rejoin the proper path, and we followed the couple and their two dogs back to safety. Our 3-mile hike ended up somewhere closer to 7 or 8 miles, and our days of unguided hiking were deemed to be over.

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