The next morning we woke up to clear, sunny skies and decided to tramp around the waterfront and get to know the area a bit. We'd made plans to meetup with some new friends of ours who we met in Fiji, so this would officially be our longest stop in NZ at four days. So we decided to leave the real touristy stuff until Chris and Emma arrived, and do other (cheap) things so we could afford a few nights out.
After the walk, we asked around in town for A relatively easy hike we could do in the afternoon. Someone recommended the Queenstown hill trek, and pointed us up the street towards the hills and we were off. Twenty minutes later we were huffing and puffing our way up one of the steepest "hill" climbs I'd ever done. We quickly realized how out of shape we were when a firefighter in full gear came sprinting up the trail behind us. Probably a good guy to have in a tough situation, but he was really showing us up! The trip was well worth the embarrassment though, check out the stunning views from the top!
The next day we decided to Follow the rest of the waterfront trail, but this time we'd go the easy route and bike it. It was another ridiculously gorgeous morning, and we set off towards the Hilton to get a coffee and see some sights. Everyone told us the newly built Hilton was the perfect spot to to stop along the way. At $400 a night rooms, we stuck out like sore thumbs amongst the other guests but the views were spectacular, and they had heated bathrooms! We could almost see how people would plunk down such a chunk of change to stay in such a nice spot, until we came out of the cafe and realized that While my bike helmet was still firmly attached to handlebars... They weren't my handlebars. Someone had jacked my bike while we were sipping our coffee and I'd taken the longest bathroom break in history to sit in the Hilton's posh and heated bathrooms. Whoops.
After several conversations with the hotel manager and staff, we found a group of guys eating breakfast who thought they'd seen someone pedaling off with it down the peninsula trail. So ewan jumped on his bike to see if he could track the culprit down while I called the police with the manager. Ewan ended up not finding any thieves (which in hindsight, we thought was a pretty good thing!) and so we were shuttled into town to the police station. Funny thing about kiwis and Queensland-- everyone we talked to was shocked a bike would be stolen, nd equally determined that it would somehow show up again. After living in seattle for the past several years, we were pretty positive that bike wasn't reappearing anytime soon. So after filling out a report at the station we stopped back at the bike shop. Our $20 rental was going to cost us more than $1400 to replace unless we could track it down.
In came the campervan detectives. We jumped into Howie Jr. And drove around the streets of Queenstown like Sherlock Holmes incarnate. Ewan suspected everyone on a bike whether they were 60 or 6 years old.
After a two hours of scouring the streets, we returned to the scene of the crime for one final search. And there it was- my muddy, custom Queenstown bike shop rental in almost the exact spot we'd left it. We couldn't agree on whether it was an entitled Hilton guest who mistook our bike for one they could take without asking just because they're rich (ewans theory) or an entitled local needing wheels fast to get to town and back (my version). Either way, after the roller coaster day we were thrilled to see that stupid bike and even more thrilled to get the $1400 credit back on our cards. Whew!
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Location:Queenstown
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