ESSENTIALS

Griff Rhys Jones was a guest of Tourism New Zealand (newzealand.com). Red Savannah (01242 787800; redsavannah.com) offers five days in New Zealand from £6,359 per person. The price includes one night at Hotel St Moritz in Queenstown, a 60-minute massage at the Millbrook Resort, return private helicopter transfers between Queenstown and Milford Sound (including a glacier landing), one night in a deluxe king cabin on board Fiordland Jewel in Milford Sound, two nights at Tin Tub Wanaka, bicycle rental at Wanaka, fourhour flying/walking /jet boat experience in Mount Aspiring National Park. Also included are Group J car rental throughout, return international flights between London Heathrow and Auckland, plus internal flights between Auckland and Queenstown.

There are few boats on it. Apparently, it can swallow and freeze unlucky kayakers.

We were heading for Glenorchy, the location for the television series Top of the Lake. One of our guides, Geoff, later told us he had given up living in Auckland to be among the people of this tiny community “who would go beyond the extra for you”. His neighbours mustered sheep drives, ran jet boats, flew helicopters, set up country stores and sold cappuccinos to passing strangers. We were advised not to mention the series. These were no inbred backwoodsmen. These were hyperactive service providers.

And we were the beneficiaries. Mrs Woolly’s General Store, where we stopped for coffee, sold dried mushrooms, pasta and aioli – as well as blankets, earthenware, cookbooks, bakery and designer clothes. It looked better equipped than Harvey Nichols.

The accuracy in Top of the Lake is the stunning scenery. We went to look at it from a helicopter. There are more of them per head of population than anywhere else in the world. Farmers use them like tractors. So can you.

Rising over a braided river and a valley of low farms, we circled twice over wooded slopes and flew over a col of snow-brushed, snaggled rocks at the summit. Wow. The open mouth of valley on the other side gaped beneath us. It wasn’t a long ride. The trip lasted 25 minutes. The geography lesson, though, will endure a lifetime.

Could there be a better way to get to the famous Milford Sound, the eighth natural wonder of the world? We swooped on to an inconceivably tiny platform at the back of the Fiordland Jewel, a powerful catamaran run by former crayfish captain Rob Swale. Sometimes he takes passengers (accommodated in luxurious cabins) to the furthest reaches of the fiord system, for week-long treks along this jagged coast. He also does overnighters for visitors like us. Of course, we wanted to stay longer. We had barely touched down (and learned a little bit about the Sound and the boat) before we were nosing out into the fiord under mountains festooned with trees which, we were told, would turn red with flowers at Christmas and greener as the hot season arrived.

Escorted at times by a pod of bottlenose dolphins, we visited seals and saw penguins clambering up boulders. The fiord walls jumped up in steps and ledges to white-capped mountains ridiculously high above us.

From the catamaran, anchored in a sheltered harbour, everybody clambered into kayaks to battle across the wind under dripping rock faces, along a shore surmounted by the tortured forms of a giant ancient forest. Later, we slept in a warm, comfortable double bed and awoke to open motorised blinds at the press of a button, revealing the spectacular scenery and feeling like James Bond at the end of an improbable adventure.

Driving on, we discovered how the area functions when it isn’t just sitting there looking great. As we climbed a mountain road, strings of poplars and firs marked out giant properties among the lakes, vineyards and valleys below. It was farming of the XXL size.

Our route north from Queenstown along the highest main road in New Zealand took us along the Cardrona river until we came to the Cardrona Hotel (with its gold-rush cowboy saloon serving pub food) and, after a further 40 minutes, to that other honeypot tourism outpost of the south: Wanaka. This low-rise settlement on the edge of the lake boasts New Zealand’s best skiing – but not skiing in-and-out. The Southern Alps that ring the lake are a broody distant prospect. You have to travel further to get to the slopes, but the climbing, sweeping, empty enormity of it all is astounding. Glacial inlets soar off to wilderness.

But these ranges of mountains in front of you are nothing. The Southern Alps continue to march north along the edge of the entire South Island.

So far, we have hardly set one foot in front of the other. A bit of canoeing, a walk along the lakeside. But this was the heart of hyperactive New Zealand, and the choice of activities – when we got around to it – was bewildering.

One of these was mountain biking, but there was also e-mountain biking for the daredevil 14-year-old hiding out in a middle-aged body. That was me.

The motors were there to provide boost on the hilly bits, but the track we