The Chronicles of NZ: Heading to Queens (Written 1/12/07)

Today we got a nice early start from Invercargill but this time our main destination was only 2 hours away instead of a tiring 5 hours away. Today we were heading for the last major city in NZ – Queenstown. But before we got there, Josh and Kevin wanted to take a little detour. While we were in Christchurch they both bought themselves a fishing pole and some bait. While I was on Stewart Island, they did a little trout fishing so they wanted to continue their fishing today. We stopped in the town of Mataura and they did a little fishing in the Mataura river (which is supposedly one of the best places to fish in this area). While they fished, I read a book (currently reading Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers). I'm not really that much of a fisherman so it didn't really appeal to me. When they came back up from the river, they told me that Kevin caught 3 fish to Josh's none. Once they put their rods away we began the drive to Queenstown, but first we stopped in the town of Gore to get lunch. The people there were really nice and helpful, heck the meter maid was giving Josh/Kevin fishing advice. I wonder if Al (Gore) has ever visited his fair city? 

The drive to Queenstown was fairly picturesque – this journey took us back towards the middle of the South Island and towards the bottom of the Southern Alps. The weather finally returned back to blue skies and sunshine today, so it was a truly beautiful drive. The big difference between Queenstown and the 3 other major NZ cities is the fact that Queenstown is not located near an ocean, instead it's situated on a lake. And once we got to the part where the lake and mountains met, the views became breathtaking. Just picture rolling green mountains reflected off crystal blue water and you might get an idea of what it looked like – don't worry, I took plenty of pics to help you out.

We arrived in Auckland at about 2:30pm and the city was just packed with people. Within a few minutes I understood why they call this town the adventure capital of the world – I saw stunt flying, skydiving, jetboating and parasailing all within a few minutes of arrival. There's a ton of stuff to do here but a good majority of it is amazingly expensive (most of the "adventure" stuff start out at $100) so money can go real fast here. Another thing that went really fast was accommodations, it seems this was a very busy weekend in Queenstown with a rugby game and downhill bike racing events taking place – a lot of the hostels were booked out (the curse of not booking a bed ahead of time) but fortunately we were able to find a place for the first night. I'll be staying at the same place for a second night while Josh/Kevin will be camping out in a nearby park (Josh brought his tent). Once we had a place to stay we went and booked our kayaking trip on Milford Sound (on Monday morning) and then went our separate ways to explore town.

Even though Queenstown is like the Las Vegas of NZ (only with adventure companies instead of casinos) there's really not much to it – it's quite literally one street where everything is kind of packed tightly together, but other then that there's not much to actually do in the town itself. In fact, I pretty much covered the entire downtown Queenstown area in a 35 minute walk! Now that's small, but one thing makes the smallness worth it. Queenstown is surrounded on all sides by beautiful and majestic mountains. One set of these mountains are called "The Remarkables" and it makes quite a breathtaking backdrop for the Queenstown area. There are no high rises in town, so no matter which way you look you're looking at a mountain. After a little stroll in town I had a bit of dinner and just relaxed because we are finally in our final stop before heading back to Auckland. We've still got one more activity to do, but no more 5-6 hour drives is good news to my ears. Now to see what little Queenstown has in store for me tomorrow!?

*Side Notes*

-           How was Queenstown named? It was named so because "it was fit for Queen Victoria".

-           The first commercial bungy site was in Queenstown at the Kawaru Bridge.

-           Jetboating (another adventure sport in Queenstown) is a NZ invention that was initially designed to accommodate the narrow, shallow and braided Kawaru and Shotover Rivers.