Blogs from Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania

We reached Queenstown, our first destination in New Zealand, on the afternoon of May 2. After the last few days of touristy hustle and bustle in the relatively bigger cities of Australia, it was a welcome change to walk around this quaint little valley town surrounded by mountains and lakes. We walked around the city center, grabbing veggie burgers for lunch, souvenir window shopping and taking in the beautiful lake front. The next day we took an early morning coach-ferry-coach tour out to Milford Sounds - an amazingly beautiful area on the lower western coast of the island. The drive out to the sounds was phenomenal. Some online guides rank the drive as one of the 10 most beautiful drives in the world, and we could definitely see why. We passed vast mountain ranges (one was ... read more

Wed 4 Apr ----------- To Queenstown today and Lake Wakatipu. These places just get better & better. Another Mercure hotel so it is a good standard. A room with two double beds and, yes, you guessed, we had one each. Unfortunately here we have no balcony but then none of the rooms here have one. The swimming pool, although it looks gorgeous, is freezing cold but there is a lovely jacuzzi hot tub to relax in. On the way here we took our time with the relatively short drive and stopped off at various points along the way, including a falls called Roaring Meg Falls which apparently was named after a voluptuous barmaid who worked in the area back in the early days. We also crossed the 45th parallel so are now in the bottom quarter ... read more

Well its my last day in Arrowtown with Sean, off to Invercargill tomorrow and then on to bluff, rode out to Glenorchy today, best bike rosd so far by far, its been a blast spending some time with my brother learning about him and me. Its time for new pastures, Got a new bike today so the blast up the road was great, invacargill, is about 200 kms, a chance to strech her legs, missing everyone so much, i have put the bungy on youtube ( sam hey vs the nevis) dont laugh i was shitting it. met some nice people here, of out tonight with Sean so until next time. Ta ta for now... read more

I'm having a day off, so I thought, it must be 20 years at least since I played rugby, so a game of touch football came as a shock to the system, I cannot stress the impact of my fitness it was. im don’t class myself as unfit, I just class everybody else as super human fit, that’s my theory and im sticking to it, mid point off the the game my lungs told my brain (in no uncertain terms to go away) and being obedient my brain did. Seriously it was a lot of fun. Travelling to Bannockburn tomorrow for the day. So some photos and another blog then. Ta Ta for now x... read more

Finally, a chance for a bit of a lazy day after tons and tons of adventure. We took a trip up the Queenstown Gondola and saw some really nice views of the city and Lake Wakatipu. After we made our way down, we stopped at the Kiwi Birdlife Park and snapped photos of many native New Zealand birds. We even got to see a few Kiwi! Unfortunately, no photos were allowed of the Kiwi, since they are nocturnal and we were in the dark. Another post coming soon!... read more

Thanks to our wonderful Kiwi-born tour guide, we enjoyed many lesser known, but still breathtaking, sights. We got to swim in beautiful blue pools, enjoy a secluded ocean beach under the mountains, and hike around some stunning lakes. I can't wait to show you the pictures - which I would have been able to do if Neil had not absent-mindedly left our memory card reader in his backpack and then tossed it on a pile of rocks. We are in Queenstown, "The Adventure Capital of the World" for the next 4 nights and should be able to get another reader tomorrow. In the morning, we are going on a full day Lord of the Rings tour. Sunday brings a day of canyoning, which I learned is rappeling down waterfalls, ziplining, and jumping into rivers. What Monday ... read more