With only the regular stops at every decent sized town to use the public toilets we soon arrived in bustling Queenstown. Also known as the adrenaline capital of the world.
Here we were to meet up with my intern. We succeeded in this at the quay having a coffee, and proceeded to check into our “unit” at a holiday park. Ha. The holiday park, probably run by Australian investors and thus weary of any “normal” relaxed kiwi-service, refused to understand that I had booked for “4 to 5 people”. I admit that this vague amount would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world but I was pretty sure I could pull it off here in kiwiland. Alas. As I would surely understand, the unit was restricted by law to only 4 people. So we bought a sleeping mat, put together all spare pillows and blankets and voila, an extra, unlawful, bed. Every time we left or entered the holiday park, we split up in 2 groups so that they wouldn’t identify us as the 4-5 people-group.
We first explored the town. After several days in the middle of nowhere and quiet if not to say sleepy towns, Queenstown was a bit of a shock. There is an electricity buzzing around the streets filled with upbeat tourists. The town centre consists solely of souvenir shops, extreme outdoor shops and bars, restaurants and cafes. The rest of the town reminded me of Whistler, or really any modern ski-village. Holiday apartments with mountain view all over the place.
We toured the centre, the gardens, did some photoshoots
and picked a restaurant. Interestingly a place specializing in bbq meat had the best vegetarian option for the intern.
This is the place where the bungee jump was invented. They now have all possible bizarre jumps you can imagine and the adrenaline kicks come in coffee-inspired flavours. If you’re into espressos, you must do a shotgun bungee, if you’re more into a decaf, try a jetboat tour. According to this scheme, we are still drinking mama’s milk, because the most adventurous thing we did was going up a hill in the gondola and taking a small “luge-ride” up there. You sit in a little cart and have to go down a track with lots of curves. Quite fun. In fact Gareth, when I told him we;d been to Q-town, immediately asked me “did you go on the luge??”.
The next day we decided we had seen enough of the town and went for a walk in the hills nearby. It started out as a walk to/from a lake, but when we got there it said “loop track to such and such lake” so after a picknick we decided to do the loop track. This was really pretty, native forest! But we soon realized this loop was not going back to where we had started from. However, using all our navigational skills, we managed to get back to the car within reasonable time and before nightfall.
We then drove up to Glenorchy,
had a fabulous coffee there and then drove to a restaurant that was apparently the best in the region and totally worth a visit. We were a bit too lazy to change our hiking clothes and shoes, and figured that as a decent kiwi restaurant they wouldn;t be fussy about dress codes and the likes. So we bashed in with dirty boots and backpacks full of apple cores, and they immediately wanted to take our packs to hide them. We sat down, ordered, and one by one visited the bathroom. A large group of other visitors was drinking aperitifs in the lounge, and they all checked us out head to toe and back, taking in the muddy boots and the windblown hair. All other guests were in cockltail dresses and interesting suits so we did fall a bit out of fashion, but still got very good treatment. The food was good too, although in my opinion not really worth all the dressing up, and Thomas ordered the strangest dessert ever that had like 20 conflicting flavours in it (“Nectarine and Saffron filled Crepe with a strawberry schnapps anglaise, accompanied with lemongrass and ginger ice-cream”). And we longed back for our “future reference” waiter, as we were now waited on by a girl whose main line was “oooh! Excellent choice! Hihihihihi!!”.
And that was Queenstown. Fun little town, magnificent surroundings. We will definitely be back here for more tramping.
Here we were to meet up with my intern. We succeeded in this at the quay having a coffee, and proceeded to check into our “unit” at a holiday park. Ha. The holiday park, probably run by Australian investors and thus weary of any “normal” relaxed kiwi-service, refused to understand that I had booked for “4 to 5 people”. I admit that this vague amount would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world but I was pretty sure I could pull it off here in kiwiland. Alas. As I would surely understand, the unit was restricted by law to only 4 people. So we bought a sleeping mat, put together all spare pillows and blankets and voila, an extra, unlawful, bed. Every time we left or entered the holiday park, we split up in 2 groups so that they wouldn’t identify us as the 4-5 people-group.
We first explored the town. After several days in the middle of nowhere and quiet if not to say sleepy towns, Queenstown was a bit of a shock. There is an electricity buzzing around the streets filled with upbeat tourists. The town centre consists solely of souvenir shops, extreme outdoor shops and bars, restaurants and cafes. The rest of the town reminded me of Whistler, or really any modern ski-village. Holiday apartments with mountain view all over the place.
We toured the centre, the gardens, did some photoshoots
and picked a restaurant. Interestingly a place specializing in bbq meat had the best vegetarian option for the intern.This is the place where the bungee jump was invented. They now have all possible bizarre jumps you can imagine and the adrenaline kicks come in coffee-inspired flavours. If you’re into espressos, you must do a shotgun bungee, if you’re more into a decaf, try a jetboat tour. According to this scheme, we are still drinking mama’s milk, because the most adventurous thing we did was going up a hill in the gondola and taking a small “luge-ride” up there. You sit in a little cart and have to go down a track with lots of curves. Quite fun. In fact Gareth, when I told him we;d been to Q-town, immediately asked me “did you go on the luge??”.
The next day we decided we had seen enough of the town and went for a walk in the hills nearby. It started out as a walk to/from a lake, but when we got there it said “loop track to such and such lake” so after a picknick we decided to do the loop track. This was really pretty, native forest! But we soon realized this loop was not going back to where we had started from. However, using all our navigational skills, we managed to get back to the car within reasonable time and before nightfall.
We then drove up to Glenorchy,
had a fabulous coffee there and then drove to a restaurant that was apparently the best in the region and totally worth a visit. We were a bit too lazy to change our hiking clothes and shoes, and figured that as a decent kiwi restaurant they wouldn;t be fussy about dress codes and the likes. So we bashed in with dirty boots and backpacks full of apple cores, and they immediately wanted to take our packs to hide them. We sat down, ordered, and one by one visited the bathroom. A large group of other visitors was drinking aperitifs in the lounge, and they all checked us out head to toe and back, taking in the muddy boots and the windblown hair. All other guests were in cockltail dresses and interesting suits so we did fall a bit out of fashion, but still got very good treatment. The food was good too, although in my opinion not really worth all the dressing up, and Thomas ordered the strangest dessert ever that had like 20 conflicting flavours in it (“Nectarine and Saffron filled Crepe with a strawberry schnapps anglaise, accompanied with lemongrass and ginger ice-cream”). And we longed back for our “future reference” waiter, as we were now waited on by a girl whose main line was “oooh! Excellent choice! Hihihihihi!!”.And that was Queenstown. Fun little town, magnificent surroundings. We will definitely be back here for more tramping.
