Queenstown

Our first impression of Queenstown was fantastic, back in civilisation but with a great 360° view. There are pubs and restaurants and shops and lots of adventure stuff to do, excellent. We also found a great caravan park close to town where our van backed onto a small creek so we fell asleep to the sounds of gurgling water and woke up to ducks quacking for food. So we were all set, ready to explore Queenstown. We began with a walk around town, some fish and chips down by the lake and up the chairlift to check out the great views of Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding Remarkables Mountains. We grabbed all the adventure brochures and began studying which ones we were going to do.

Fish and chips on the beach

View of Queenstown from the chairlift

Queenstown Chairlift (resorting to hats now to hide my disgusting hair)

Warwick sitting in the old chairlift cars that they had when he was here last (35 yrs ago)

The one thing everyone forgets to mention about Queenstown is that adventure is bloody expensive – its perfectly designed to suck as much money out of you in the fastest possible time. There are Queenstown combos where you can package 2, 3, 4 activities together, not to save money, no its the exact same price, but it allows you to fit everything into one day. What a great idea – create all this hype about Queenstown being the adventure capitol of the world and then sit back and count the money.

Warwick had his eye initially on the jet boating ($109 pp) and canyon swing ($169 pp for one swing). I agreed to the jet boating but have no interest at all in diving from a perfectly good cliff, free falling vertically for 60 meters, reaching speeds of 150 kph before swinging through a 200 m arc. No thank you, maybe I’ll have a nice peaceful massage instead. Anyway, so back to the jet boating – we went on the Shotover Jet which is supposed to be the most thrilling in Queenstown. Both of us were pretty disappointed, it was about 20 mins of jet boating, not particularly scary with the only good bit being the 360° spins. But for an additional $35 you can purchase a photo booklet of your Shotover Jet experience! – no thanks we don’t need any reminders. So we walked away feeling a bit ripped off and not that keen to spend our money on any further adventure activities. Don’t worry we have to come back here anyway to fly home so Warwick has some more time to contemplate the canyon swing.

Also Warwick was eaten alive by sandflies: