Crazy, Crazy Queenstown

Arriving in Queenstown we checked into the Top 10 Motor Camp only to find we had the last space - first time we've been to a full campsite but no doubt that's down to the popularity of Queenstown and of course, the school holidays. It tipped down the first day and we couldn't understand why everyone raves so much about the beauty of the town - the glorious snowcapped mountains and forests that we were to spend the rest of our stay marveling at were hidden behind shrouds of mist. We bumped into Lee and Julie again in their funky split screen VW camper van and went out with them for a crazy night in Queenstown which cumulated in 'Worldbar' where they serve cocktails in teapots. Very British. We got back to the van after a great night but a little worse for wear!

We woke the following morning to brilliant sunlight flooding into the van and a strange sound of buzzing. Concerned about our activities of the night before and wondering whether we had brought a wasps nest back with us, we soon located the source. Helicopters. Everywhere. The minute the sun comes out, Queenstown picks up the pace and the sky is filled with light aircraft over The Remarkables, hangliders over Queenstown Hill and Paragliders gracefully falling over Lake Wakatipu. Ignoring throbbing heads we raced to book some adrenalin activities - caught up in the excitement radiating through the town. After a lovely lunch sat outside and looking down to the lake and up to mountains, we spent the afternoon doing the 'High Five Combo'; a jet boat ride, helicopter trip, luges, gondola ride and a movie. The jet boat ride through shotover river is promoted as the world's greatest and it certainly lives up to this in our limited experience of jet boating. The Shotover canyons are really beautiful and team that with very narrow channels to jet boat through and travelling at 70kph, it was a pretty thrilling ride! We then had a short helicopter trip to the top of Queenstown Hill, it was only 5 minutes but the thrill of being in a helicopter over the most amazing place in New Zealand was a real buzz. We then had 2 luge rides (toboggans on wheels like in Rotorua but without the rain!) and a gondola ride back down to Queenstown. The fifth part of the combo was a movie called Kiwi Magic which was pretty cheesy and definitely set in the 80's but was served as a recap on everywhere we had travelled in New Zealand from Auckland to Queenstown. Again, again! Finally our day ended with a game of mini golf - Steve narrowly won but Beth played with more style - a hole-in-one and overtones of Laura Davies. Beth wrote this bit, of course.

The next day Beth had a tattoo after finally working up the courage and holding on to the fact that it would only take an hour and we both wanted one as a reminder of our world trip together. So gritting her teeth, she endured 5 minutes of the pain on her lower back then promptly passed out. She awoke to Steve's stricken face having passed out with eyes open and rolling back in their sockets like a loon. Unfortunately, the tattoo artist had not completed the tattoo in this time and an excrutiating hour later, she emerged with a south pacific design on her lower back to commemorate our world trip. Supposedly girls handle the pain better than boys but we are clearly the exception!


In the afternoon we negotiated the mighty Deer Park Heights which was one of the principle areas for the Lord of the Rings filming locations. Armed with our guide book we climbed the 800m high, 5km trek to the top and saw where Aragorn was dragged over the cliff by the wolf type creatures (Wargs) and where the refugees from Rohan walked past lakes and mountains. The locations are so small in reality and dwarfed totally by the stunning Remarkables mountain range domineering the background. No wolf type creatures up there much to Steve's disappointment but there were plenty of deers, bison, goats and Lord of the Ring's anoraks!

Steve skydived over The Remarkables the following day from 15,000ft - that is not a typing error. He had to have oxygen up until the moment him and the instructor tumbled from the plane and free fell at 200kph - the nutters. Beth watched as they gracefully parachuted through the clouds to the ground alongside the other tandem skydivers - bizarrely all medical students which was probably the best type of people with which to embark on an adventure like that!
To bring Steve totally back down to earth, we spent the afternoon playing indoor golf this time at the 'Caddy Shack City' - most amusing themed crazy golf. Steve might have won again but Beth is still the most stylish. humph.

Unable to resist the lure of the slopes for long, we got back on them and this time on The Remarkables mountain range which dominate the Queenstown sky line. It was a pretty overcast day but the spring snow was powdery and we were happy people as we spent the day negotiating pistes, or fields, as they are called in New Zealand.

After all the adrenalin of the last few days, we completed our Queenstown activity agenda by taking a rather sedate but lovely trip on the TSS Earnslaw steam boat across Lake Wakatipu, one of the only tidal lakes in the world.

We were so sad to leave Queenstown as it is easily the most beautiful place we have seen in New Zealand and on top of that, the most exciting.
Money doesn't go very far here though and so we were forced to drag ourselves away but not before we had a final night out where we visited Queenstown's 'coolest' bar Minus 5 - literally minus 5 degrees with ice sculptures and cocktails served in ice glasses. We met some great Argentineans in 'the fridge' who we swapped South America stories with but after 30 minutes we were pretty glad to be out and the zero degrees outside seemed almost tropical. We had a nice meal in 'The Cow' restaurant which the Lord of the Rings cast had frequented whilst filming, then partied until 3am in the 'Rattlesnake bar', 'Lone Ranger' and finally ended up in the 'World Bar' again. We have vague memories of feeling quite middle-aged in a club full of 18 year old English gap year students and even found ourselves saying stuff like 'we remember this song the first time round'. My God! Undeterred however, we danced the night away to the latest New Zealand music which is probably 6 months old in England. We drank in the sight of the full moon illuminating the peaks of The Remarkables whilst walking back to the motorcamp, before sleeping off our hangovers and continuing our South Island tour.