Queenstown

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We stayed for a few days in Queenstown on the shore of Lake Wakatipu. Queenstown is New Zealand's centre of extreme sports, where you can do anything from bungy jumping to rafting to sky diving. We managed to avoid all of those activities but we did spend a day skiing at Coronet Peak, although I seemed to spend more time falling over than skiing as it was only the second time I had done it. We went on a high speed trip on a jet boat on the rocky Shotover River. The Kiwi jet boat driver was crazy and sent the boat flying at full speed towards the rocks only to swerve away at the last moment, missing them by what seemed like millimetres. At times he would suddenly spin the boat round in a circle, creating a huge wave of water and soaking us. It was fun but after half an hour of this we were glad to get back on dry land!

To calm down from this excitement we spent a day in sleepy Arrowtown, a former gold rush town near Queenstown. The buildings give it the feel of a wild west town but it also has quite a few restaurants and bars and a great little cinema. There is a good museum that explains the history of the area and we walked round the remains of an old Chinese settlement, from the times when Chinese people came over to look for gold here.

Back in Queenstown we just had to go and see one of the most unusual (and coldest) bars I've ever been to, called Minus 5. It's made almost entirely of ice, with ice walls, an ice bar and ice sculptures. Even the glasses you drink out of are made of ice. It's kept at minus 5 degrees or below at all times and you're not allowed to stay for more than half an hour (the frozen corpses would just get in the way). We had vodka cocktails and stood around drinking them in the freezing cold for the full half hour before leaving for a nice warm restaurant.

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