Queenstown and More

Waking up at 5AM wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and check in at the airport was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. All I had to do was put my name into a kiosk, select my flight, and then hit print. That was about it, there was no security, no questions, nothing.

I brought two books with me thinking I’d finish one on the plane and read the other on the bus. The flight was incredible, and I didn’t need to open a book. I was too distracted by the sunrise on the snow peaked mountains.
The weather on the South Island was perfect. The sun was out all day Thursday and Friday. I don’t think I’ve seen that much sunshine since I left the states. Apparently the people in Dunedin also had not seen the sun in a while either.

When we left Dunedin on Thursday for Queenstown, I thought it was a pretty cool town and I looked forward to spending Sunday there. There are a lot of cool old buildings there; it was like we got off the plane somewhere in Europe.


The bus ride to Queenstown from Dunedin was long, but also very scenic. We saw amazing snow capped mountains the whole way there. I have to admit though, I’ve seen so many mountains lately that they are starting to become less and less interesting.

Queenstown wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I didn’t really know what exactly to expect, but I wasn’t expecting the busiest ski town I’ve ever seen. All the buildings were fairly new, and they were filled with ski rentals, cafes, and expensive shops.

Thursday night, after the long day of traveling, we all signed up for a pub crawl. It was probably the best deal I’ve bought in New Zealand. I paid $25 to go to six bars with this crowd, and got six free drinks. Some were pretty good, others not so much, but it ended up being a lot of fun. Ironically it was Canada Day, so a lot of the bars had Canadian Flags and maple leaves everywhere. The Canadians sure were proud to be there.

Not going to bed until 3:30AM didn’t make the next day very easy. I woke up really early hoping that I would be able to sign up for a bungee, but we missed the first shuttle into town. Because of the Lord of the Rings tour a few others and I booked we couldn’t do any other bungee that day. So bunging was put on hold for a while I guess.

To kill time before our Lord of the Rings tour Wes, Sarah, and I walked around town taking in the scenery. We boarded the skyline gondola up the mountain where the views were incredible.

The view of the town next to Lake Wakitipu beneath The Remarkables can’t really be described with words. We couldn’t of asked for a better day either. The sun was out shiny bright and keeping us warm too.

We eventually met up with our tour guide for The Lord of the Rings. His name was David, and he wasn’t very bright. He couldn’t really tell us a lot about the scenery we were looking at, he mostly just referred to his book and read aloud from it when we had a question.

Towards the end of our tour I was talking to David about my bungee problem and he asked if we wanted to try paragliding. Wes and I jumped at the idea and David booked it for us right over the phone.

Paragliding was a lot of fun; it was a good time of the day to do it too. Seeing the sun set over the mountains while in mid air was definitely something I’m not going to forget. The best part of it all was going down. My guide made a hard left turn and we circled our way down. We got going pretty fast too.


Our last day in Queenstown wasn’t really spent in Queenstown. We had to get up even earlier than the day before to catch our bus to Milford Sound. It took almost five hours to get there, granted to stopped in a town called Te Aneu and many other places along the way to take pictures.

Milford Sound is tucked away in the Fiordland National Park. Besided hiking, the only way to get there is by taking the Milford Road. Thankfully, because we had booked spots on a tour we didn’t have to drive.

The Milford Road takes you past 14 fiords and below the 45th parallel, which is the 1/2 way line between the equator and the South Pole. Only 10% of the world’s population ever goes below it, and now I’m part of that.

Milford sound was mistakenly named, it’s actually a fiord. A sound is formed by a river and a fiord is formed by a glacier. All the fiords we past were amazing, but they had nothing on Milford. When we finally got to Milford we took a boat out to the Tasman Sea turned around and returned to the pier. Everything about Milford was amazing, the water, the mountains, the waterfall, everything. When we were coming back it began to rain, and then even more waterfalls began to form. We couldn’t go very fall with out spotting a few waterfalls.

After we returned to the pier, we got back on the bus and returned to Queenstown. Without any stops on the way the drive was much shorter. The remainder of the day was not very exciting. We all got some food and I basically passed out afterwards, but a good nights sleep is what I needed.

Once again we had to wake up early the next morning, this time we were catching a bus back to Dunedin. The bus ride was pretty fun, I sat next to this cool guy from California. He’d been living in New Zealand for six and a half years. His wife is a kiwi that he met on some skiing trip or something.

This time around Dunedin was pretty boring. We’d basically seen everything so we ended up just walking around trying to kill time. We found our way to the world’s steepest street and successfully climbed our way to the top.

Overall the weekend was one of my better trips. Not bunging was a big bummer for me, but I know the opportunity will arise again. I know this post is really late, but I’ve been busy at work I swear. That’s another story though.