Stop 6: Queenstown

I'm at the point in my travels where everything keeps getting more and more beautiful and I keep thinking it can't possibly get any prettier. WRONG. Queenstown has to be the most beautiful city in the world. I got in at night, so I didn't really get to see the full awe of the city until I woke up the next morning. I went down to reception to plan out my activities in the adventure capital of NZ (all the hostels can do every booking for you) and a good chunk of change later I had everything booked. Monday was supposed to rain, so I figured it would be a good day to walk around town under the protection of the awnings. Turns out it was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day and it only took about an hour to walk around town. I felt kind of goofy because while it was cold, it wasn't that cold so I only had my light jacket on, but everyone else is in ski gear (at least 75% of the people are there to ski).

The hostel I was at happened to have a group going to play frisbee golf, so I joined in on that and had fun. Fortunately most everyone was as bad at throwing the frisbee as me. I got back and some awesome people (two girls from London, a guy from Austria, and two guys from Finland) had moved into my room so I hung out with them.

View of Queenstown. See Gondola at the top of the hill

Tuesday I did a wine tour. Its interesting because they can only grow one type of red, Pinot Noir, but it is one of the best places in the world to grow Pinot Noir. We went to an interesting range of wineries and had a grand old time. I learned why champagne has longer foil tops than wine. In the kitchen that night I met and older Austrailian man who had happened to work at Camp Grady Spruce when he was younger. Small world.

This winery had a wine cave

Cool architecture

Wednesday I had to wake up bright and early at 6am to go take a trip to doubtful sound. Ironically a guy I had met on the ferry a few weeks before happened to be doing the same trip, so I hung out with him. Unfortunately when I woke up I had a miserable cough and just felt awful.We took about a 3 hour bus ride to a lake where we took a boat across, another 45 min bus ride to the final boat out on the sound. An older asian lady sitting behind me spent the entire first bus ride throwing up. Didn't help the fact that I already felt awful.

The sound was really pretty and we saw some penguins, dolphins, birds, but mostly from afar. My favorite part was when we went into a cove and the water was absolutely still. The captain turned off everyone on the boat and made everyone be quiet for a minute just to enjoy the sound of nature and absolute silence. On the way back we went into NZ's largest hydro power plant. Because the lake and the water from the sound are at two different heights, they can transfer water between the two and use the natural gravity drop to create power. Another interesting fact was that the water in the sound is freshwater for the first few inches and below is the salt water. Since the fresh water is cloudy, less light gets through than most salt water environments and wildlife/coral that normally lives at really deep depths in the darkness live in much shallower water and you can easily view them by diving.

View of Doubtful Sound from above

you may need to angle your screen to really get the colors in this one

Power Plant

Thursday was my adventure day. I woke up still feeling miserable, but I had things to do, which also helped take my mind off of it. I started off by parasailing. We took the ski lift (after detailed instructions on how to get on and off) up to the top of the ski slope, hiked in the snow a bit higher and then ran off the side of the mountain. Personally I think sky diving is a lot more exciting and there isn't much of an adrenaline rush, but the views were beautiful and the stunts at the end were kinda cool. There was another couple doing it with me and the guy was the most scared out of everyone (became true in everything I did that day). After lunch I took the gondola to the top of a hill and did the luge (also not as exciting as one might think, but it got more fun the more I did it) and then ziplined. I had an absolute blast ziplining and the guides were a lot of fun. Two of the girls started telling all the "how do you get an elephant in the fridge" jokes and it just kept going from there. We got to zipline hanging upside down and some other fun stunts. The last zipline is the steepest zipline in the world and was a BLAST.

view from the top of the gondola

Paragliding! Directly behind our heads is where we took off from

The view isn't too bad

The mountains are the Remarkables

luging

Ready to Zipline!

The mountain range, The Remarkables, are cool because they are the only mountain range in the world that runs due north and south with no curves. At the base is also an absolutely beautiful stretch of road that they said most of the car commercials are filmed on. Friday I woke up and caught my bus to Invercargill.