Hello Queenstown!

This city is so beautiful! It is nestled between huge mountains, one range is even called "The Remarkables" (that's how remarkable the scenery is) and it is on this beautiful crystal blue water. So gorgeous! We spent our first afternoon just cruising around the town and checking out the sights. Then we made our way to a Department Of Conservation campground to spend the night. It was right on the water and we were able to get in a little TRX workout followed by a swim before dinner.

The next day we decided to take a day trip up to Wanaka. They say it is an up and coming town with tons of mountain biking and that it is very similar to Queenstown. The drive there was awesome. We passed a ton of wineries and fruit stands, as well as beautiful hills and mountains in the background. Wanaka is very similar to Queenstown - there are a ton of extreme sports to do, it is right on the water and it is nestled in between a bunch of beautiful snow capped mountains. We didn't do any extreme sports here, but we did have lunch by the beach and then went and saw a movie. We had run into a couple from Edmonton the night before at the DOC site and they lived in Wanaka for 3 weeks and highly recommended this Paradiso movie theatre. Since it was a windy, cool day we decided to see The Book Thief. Great movie (the book was better) but the theatre was awesome! You can get coffee, tea, booze, snacks, meals, popcorn, ice cream, etc to take into the theatre with you. And when you get inside you get to sit on couches and cool chairs instead of your standard movie chairs. The most hilarious (and brilliant) part of the theatre is that they stop the movie half way through for an "intermission". Everyone goes back into the lobby and buys more food. And they even have fresh, huge, home made cookies for sale. I couldn't pass up that smell so Dave and I indulged in a double chocolate cookie for the second half of the movie and it was hot out of the oven! It was the coolest movie theatre I've ever been to!

We spent that night back in Queenstown and had big plans for the next day. We started the day out with Dave doing the Shotover Canyon Swing. You are in a harness that lets you jump off the canyon platform in as many ways as you can think of. You fall 60m before the swing kicks in, then you swing over 200m out over a canyon. Dave did a back tuck off the edge of the cliff for his jump. We got some pretty cool pictures and he really enjoyed it. I decided to save all my courage for when we sky dive later in the trip.

Eeeek!

 

That afternoon we had lunch in Queenstown at a place called Fergburger. We had never heard of it, but everytime we passed the restaurant there were huge crowds so we decided to try it. They were pretty awesome burgers!

From there we stumbled upon a local travel agency that books trips and activities throughout NZ, Australia and Fiji. We were chatting with a girl named Emma and we told her what our plans were for the rest of NZ and she was able to set us up with open ended vouchers for a lot of the activities we wanted to do in the North Island, at a pretty sweet discount. So, we have sky diving, white water rafting, a Maori Hangi and Hobbiton (the Lord of the Rings tour) booked for the north island already. I guess that means I have to sky dive now......

We also signed up for a pub crawl that evening. So, after dinner we made our way down to the Vinyl Underground bar and started our 6 bar tour of Queenstown with a crazy group of people. One chick decided to show everyone her boobs every 5 mins or so and everyone just proceeded to get really wasted! It was a fun night though. And I have decided that every bar should have a dress up area in it. We were at one bar that had tons of different animal onsies in it and everyone loved them. It was awesome!

Random but hilarious

Our 3rd and last day in Queenstown we spent getting ready for our trek and taking in the spectacular views of the city. We started the day off at the DOC centre picking up our tickets for the Routeburn and Caples tracks that we start in 2 days. Then we made our way up the gondola to the top of the mountain in town and did some luging. It was really fun! You get your own little luge to sit in and they have 2 different tracks that you can ride down as fast (or as controlled in my case) as you can. We had a blast and had to do it a few times before we were able to leave. We went back up to the top of the mountain that night for dinner. We treated ourselves to a nice dinner out on the town. It was a fantastic buffet with the best views of Queenstown. The food was amazing - tons of seafood (mussles, shrimp, scallops, etc), soup, a carving station, salad bar, dessert bar, and tons more food. We stuffed our faces and got to stare at the mountains and the city while we ate. It was such a nice way to cap off our time in Queenstown.

Not a bad view for dinner

 

We head out to Glenorchy tomorrow to start the Routeburn track followed by the Caples track for 5 days of hiking. Fingers crossed for good weather!

Thanks for reading

xoxo