Queenstown

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Hi, well we stayed in queenstown for about a week. It is classed as a city but really it is a town at the edge of a lake and at the bottom of a mountain - looks very pretty at night. The whole town is pretty much dedicated to skiing and snowboarding as they have 3 mountains available to ski on around there.

Katie and I went on a trip to Milford sounds which is a fiord (body of water carved out from where a glacier once was). It took 2 hours on the coach to get to Te Anau where we stopped for a break to grab a drink or some food, we popped into this little bird sanctuary which was a bit rubbish they only had 5 different types of bird and they were in pretty small cages. Then we drove on to Milford sound stopping a few times at a chasm, a mountain, and a lake. We had to go through a pretty scary tunnel that went right through the mountain to get to Milford sound on the other side. We had a 2 hour boat trip it was beautiful there, with 4 waterfalls, we spotted 2 baby seals sunbathing on a rock and we also came across a pod of bottlenose dolphins who came racing toward the boat and jumping around - it was great! The weather was great for us too.

On the way back we stopped at a pub for lunch which was nice, met an English guy on the trip so katie and I had lunch with him. Then they had a dvd player on the coach so they put that on for the rest of the journey. It took roughly 5 hours from Queenstown to Milford Sound and the same amount of time to get back (not including stops), so it was a long day.

We spent a couple of days looking around town, the winter festival is on at the moment so there was usually something going on in town like the mardi gras, dog show, and randomly people jumping off the pier. Katie and I went up to the Remarkables which is one of the skiing mountains in Queenstown. There were some great views on the way up - we actually went above the clouds which was weird. Katie and I were in different groups for skiing because she has had a lesson before but i hadnt. It was a nice sunny day and the first lesson in the morning was great they, people were falling all over the place but i only fell once so i thought yep this is cool im doing ok at this. Although i did actually ski right into someone so we ended up hugging to stop us both falling over - he should have got out of the way faster! Met up with Katie for lunch and then had another lesson in the afternoon which wasnt so good. He was trying to teach us how to stop and how to turn - could i stop? - could i heck!!! I managed to slow down but never actually stopped. Once i was going very fast heading for a group of children so i lent to my left and made myself fall over so i could stop! The second time was definately not on purpose I was trying to do turns while going down the slope and landed flat on my face! I am glad i tried skiing - even though the boots really hurt! But i definately need more lessons on how to stop!!! hehe.

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Photos

waterfall
waterfall at milford sound