The Chronicles of NZ: Walking Queenstown (Written 1/13/07)

So today was one of those special stopover days in a major city of NZ, which meant no major driving. Which also meant we got to sleep in till a decent hour and were well rested for the day. For only the second time in our trip, Josh and I would be splitting up in terms of where we were sleeping: I am staying in the hostel that I stayed in last night and Josh/Kevin are camping out. So once they checked out, Josh/Kevin went to do even more fishing and I had the day to myself. The first order of business was getting the day off with a good breakfast which I had not experienced since Christchurch (in this cast, oatmeal!). Once that was out the way, I headed across the street to watch the national rugby 7s matches – this would be my first professional rugby match and since admission was free, I thought I would give rugby a chance.

Now this is only my opinion, but rugby seems to be a bit like checkers whereas American football (here forever referred to solely as football) is like chess – rugby appears very simple and can be over extremely fast. There are different versions of rugby (union, league, Aussie rules) but they all seem geared towards speed and reaction. It didn't help that these 7s matches only last for 14 minutes a match – so you blink and it's over. Football may play "slow" but at least you feel like you're watching a contest. So I had an interesting experience but nothing I saw at the 7s made me want to embrace rugby. Once I watched a few matches (I think in an hour I watched 3 matches) I left to walk around the city a bit more. This time I went into a few more buildings and realized that although everything appears crushed onto one street – there's a lot within the buildings on this one street. In fact, I found 3 places selling actual LOTR items (compared to the 2 in Wellington) but the one ring was still a bit pricey. I walked around for about an hour showing restraint by not purchasing anything – financial temptation comes in many forms in Queenstown.

Once I had lunch, I took a ride on the Skyline Gondola which takes you to a chalet on top of a mountain to get a better view of the Queenstown area. As the gondola was rising above Queenstown, I got a much better look at the entire town area and how impressive the mountains look in relation to the town. When I reached the actual chalet and stepped out onto the view deck – the view was quite impressive. I got a great view of the full range of the Remarkables and the lake next to Queenstown. Fortunately, the weather was till good when I first arrived so I got to see the area in it's full glory.

There were quite a few options in terms of activities up in the chalet: there's the viewing deck, a few walking trails, a bungy jump, a bar and restaurant, a café, a souvenir shop, a Maori show and the luge. Now the luge is like a combination of go carts (without the engine) and bumper cars (without the bumping). There's a chairlift that takes you to an even higher point on the mountain, you get in this buggy cart deal and then ride downhill on a track (picture a go cart track on a mountain). There are two tracks you can choose from: Scenic and Advanced. Everyone who does the luge for the first time on a day has to do the scenic track which is easier and gives you a feel for driving the cart. The advanced track is obviously more fun – it has more turns and bigger dips. So in order to get the real luge experience you have to go at least twice – business at it's finest. So I of course signed up to do two and just as I finished my second run it started to rain and they closed the track – so I was blessed there. I stayed up in the chalet for a bit just watching the changing weather from high up – it went from clear, to rain, to fog, to mist in about a 30 minute span. Unfortunately, the weather didn't return to it's great condition before so I left the chalet and headed to dinner with Josh and Kevin.

We ate dinner at the only Mexican restaurant in Queenstown, Sombrero's. It was a bit pricey but the food was good. The boys told me that they had basically been fishing all day and in that time Josh still didn't catch a fish but Kevin caught one. After dinner we went to our separate sleeping accommodations and I got to meeting my new roommates for the night. I thought they were from Germany or France, but they were really from Israel (it was 3 guys) and were speaking Hebrew – I think this is the first time I actually heard someone speak Hebrew in real life. Meeting folks from all sorts of life on this journey.

With our day of rest out of the way, we head to Milford Sound tomorrow – but first it is Sunday and you know what that means; time to watch some chess…I mean football!

*Side Notes*

-           2 of the Israeli's were young (under 28) and the other one was older. They said this was their big vacation after serving in the Israeli army – a vacation that has lasted a month and a half (and counting).

-           The Skyline Gondola is 762m (2500ft) above sea level and 456m (1496ft) above Queenstown.