Advertisement
Published: July 19th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Over Queenstown
A Paraglider over the mountains and lake in Queenstown I had 5 days left in Queenstown and pretty much done everything that I wanted to so far apart from one thing. There is a place called Milford Sound about three hours drive from Queenstown that is one of a few 'World Heritage' sights. Other places in the same league are The Grand Canyon and The Great Barrier Reef so it is quite a special place.
I booked the trip for Sunday and while I had some time to kill I went up the Gondola, to the top of the mountain that overlooks Queenstown. It was a really steep chairlift and there was really good views over Lake Wakatipu on the way up and at the top. Obviously I didn't go up for the views though.
There is a luge track at the top which is like a go-kart track except it works with gravity. The little luges that you get in just freewheel down the track and you just have a break. I got 5 go's and it was very fun... got carried away though and nearly killed myself overtaking and cutting up all the litle kids. It was pretty quick and you had to use your breaks;
Luge
The luge run at the top of the mountain in Queenstown. The little go-kart type cars just had a brake and they went down the track with gravity. They went pretty quick and I actually nearly fell out and maimed a child as I found out by falling out on one of the corners... embarassing when the 12 year old I just caned around the previous corner came buzzing past while I was trying to lift the cart up!
On the day of the trip I caught the bus with the same company as the one I've been going around the island on, and it picked us up at 7am. It was a bit early for my liking but after a quick kip in the morning i was ready for action. We headed out towards the south around Lake Wakatipu which is 50 miles long; the third biggest in New Zealand. As we climbed steadily up through the mountain ranges, we had a few stops to get out and take pictures and nail each other with snowballs etc.
There hadn't been snow for about a week so it wasn't to thick but when it does snow they sometimes have to close the roads because of the high risk of avalanches. The driver was very good and told us lots of interesting stuff at every part of the journey we came to- things like, the geologists in the region fly explosives up
Mirror Lakes
No idea how they got their name but for dome reason they work like a mirror on the mountains in the background. The sign in the water was written back-to-front so you could only read it in the lake water in helicopters and drop them on the mountains to make avalanches otherwise they would be too big and destroy the road and everything around.
At one stop we were alongside a river where we could fill our water bottles up and it was very tasty- much better than Evian.
At the next stop we got to see one of New Zealands birds called a 'Kea'; the only alpine parrot in the world. They are really clever and curious so there was one waiting where the bus pulled up because they can usually get some food out of it. We could get amazingly close for a wild bird and it was pretty cool.
We stopped off at quite a few more places of interest along the way, and were driving through massive valleys that have thousands of waterfalls when it rains. Unfortunately it was a blue sky day so most of the waterfalls were frozen. The area, called the Fiordlands National Park is the second wettest place on the planet (after some place in Hawaii) and it gets 8 metres of rain a year!
When we arrived in Milford Sound it was about dinner time and we jumped straight onto a
Glacier Stream
On the way down to Milford Sound. The water in the stream was clean enough to drink and actually felt warm to touch... weird boat to begin our cruise around it. Milford Sound is actually a Fiord, not a Sound, which means that it is a lake carved out by a glacier that leads out to the sea; one of about 15 in the area.
The lake is salt water because of the sea but the top 2 foot is freshwater because of the melting snow and massive amount of rain- interesting. On the boat we had a complimentary dinner, bit of a result; and chatted to a couple of people that I met on the bus.
The boat trip was amazing and lasted for about 2 hours; the captain drove close to all the waterfalls around the edge and gave a commentary about what all the rocks and other shizzle was. On the way back in we saw a couple of fur seals on a rock and that was wicked. (I was loving it because I had been having an argument with a girl a couple of days ago saying that fur seals were sea lions not seals and I was right... in your face biatch!)
Anyway the whole journey was spectacular and even the ride there was better than a lot of
Kea
One of the smartest animals in the world and the only alpine parrot, waiting around for tourists to feed it places I have been. I'm not usually one for a scenic place; especially one that sounds like the Lake District, but it was well worth doing.
The 3 days travelling from Queenstown back around to Christchurch was a scenic as the rest of the country. There is a ridiculous amount of sheep everywhere and we ended up hearding 700 cows with the bus at one point. The driver knew a ridiculous amount about sheep, cows and pretty much everything else in the country so the commentary was quite interesting.
We stayed in two really nice hostels on the way back... first of all in a place called Dunedin; a fairly large town on the East coast that is similar to Edinburgh and has scottish roots; aslo its claim to fame is that it has the worlds steepest street- we walked up it and I can tell you, if you lived up there you'd have to be a complete idiot.
Next we stopped off at a tiny village called Lake Tekapo (or Tikapo as people say in New Zealand- with their accents they always say 'i' instead of 'e'; so they say 'brid' for 'bread' and stuff like that). It
Milford
On the back of the boat on Milford Sound. The place was awesome was another very scenic lake with a population of about 20, all of whom were in the pub that night. The towns tourist attraction is a very well placed church where everyone comes to get married and a statue of a dog!
Anyway after 18 days excitement I am back in Christchurch and pretty knackered. I fly back to Sydney tomorrow to look for a job... nice. I hope I make the plane because I'm meeting up with some peeps from the bus later to go down the pub. Wouldn't mind being stuck in New Zealand though- it was well worth the trip!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.103s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0709s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb