You certainly can't say it ain't impressive...

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Wanaka was indeed the quiet option. A small town, seemingly reliant on the ski industry (no longer in season when I visited), Wanaka is small and largely uneventful. I stayed in a small, sparsely populated hostel, where most people were long-term worker-types. The scenery was beautiful, but in New Zealand, where there are countless places which can boast impressive natural surroundings, this is not enough to guarantee a successful tourist trade. I spent a few days in town, before deciding to move on to Queenstown.

Queenstown is the self-stylised extreme/adventure capital of the world. It was without a doubt a tourist town, packed with bars, which were in turn packed with people determined to get as drunk as humanly possible. Queenstown is in-your-face and presents more opportunities to thrown caution to the wind (and possibly break some bones) than you can possibly imagine. It is nestled against the shore of a large lake, with snow-tipped mountains providing the backdrop, and it would be hard to fault the location of the place.

I declined the crazy options (mostly for financial reasons), but I can imagine that Queenstown with a larger budget would be an awesome experience. You can, amongst many other things, ride rapids on a body board, jump a 130 metre bungee, motorcross through the landscape, and - get this - have a go at driving a monster trunk! Can you imagine? You actually get to crush a car!

I went on a couple of walks up some fairly steep hills and was rewarded with some unbelievable views. There is a gondola up a nearby hill (large hill, trust me). I decided to take it up and walk down. Not so. Some financially-minded bastard had realised that more people would want to walk down than up, so the only one way trip possible was walking up and getting the gondola down. Sod ‘em. I would walk both ways, damn their poxy ride. Luckily, whilst walking up, someone walking down generously gave me their unused return ticket.

I went out one night, which was alright. I met some good people, including an English couple I had already met in Franz, and a couple of German guys who I had somehow managed to bump into initially in Taupo, and then in Franz, Punakaiki and now finally here in Queenstown. They offered me a lift to Te Anau, nearest town of reasonable size to the fjord land area in the south-west of the country, home of Milford Sound, one of the most popular natural attractions the country has to offer.

Milford Sound was on a scale hard to comprehend let alone describe with mere words. Even the drive over there left little opportunity for conversation whilst jaws rested firmly on the floor of the car. We (that is me and the German guys) took an early cruise (cheaper in the morning) around the sound. Cliff-faces and mountains tower on all sides dwarfing the scattered collection of cruise ships. One waterfall early on, which I suspected to be a good 50 metres in height, was revealed to actually be 160 metres high! And that was only the start of it. Some cliff-faces reached heights of up to a thousand feet. It was beautiful.

As we reached the sea end of the sound, the driver came over the speaker to announce we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to see some.....wait for it.....penguins!

Penguins!

There the little guys were, just hopping along, going around their business. It was truly fantastic to see them in the wild, and the sighting resulted in a lengthy conversation about how a penguin would make the best pet in the world.

I have continued to travel with the German guys, and we have found a bit of a gem of a hostel, 25km north of Dunedin, called The Asylum. It is in the grounds of a now demolished asylum, which was, up until 1940 or so, the largest public building in New Zealand. It is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the remains of the asylum, and seems to be pretty much the nicest place I have stayed at so far. It is cosy, the owner is incredibly friendly, normal (i.e. not bunk) beds, free pool table, not to mention a collection of 50 unrestored classic cars. Pretty cool place.

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