The Trip to Queenstown

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We made the decision to head back to the South Island while we were in Wellington and to head towards one of our favourite spots - Queenstown. Wellington was windy and cold (surprise! surprise!) We boarded the Interislander ferry popped a few gravel pills (bit of a rocky boat ride) for the 3rd time and headed over to Picton to begin the trek south. We were lucky enough to run into a few friends from Paradiso (Nelson) at this hostel and we spent the night in a beautiful tree house in the backyard of the hostel and at a hilarious Irish pub in town catching up.
Decided to tackle the trip down the east coast on the bus and Christchurch was the first stop. We arrived late at night and the central business district is completely shut down still so the bus dropped us off outside of downtown and finding a hostel was a difficult task since may of them are still closed. As you drove through the city you saw the rubble from buildings that have already been torn down and fenced off areas. The one road is closed on the one side since the entire ground has sunk down. The damage is also hard to see on a lot of the buildings because they look okay from the outside but there is serious structural damage. We didn’t go towards town since we arrived late at night and left early the next day and the downtown area is still shut down.
Left Christchurch and headed for Queenstown the next day. Arrived at 7pm and of coarse forgot to book accommodation ahead of time. It being a long weekend the entire city was packed. We called every backpacker hostel in the book and there wasn’t an empty bed left in town. One of the hostel owners let us crash on the couches in the lounge for the night. The hostel is called Adventures Queenstown and it is brand new less than 2 months old. It is a really cool place with everything you could ever want including guitars, movies, games, the best showers in NZ and pretty comfy couches. They are fully booked till Tuesday so we were lucky enough to find a home at the Bungee Backpackers for the weekend.
Arrived at Bungee only to find out about the largest Easter pub crawl in Queenstown and it was a must attend activity (not hard to convince us). We went into downtown and travelled around the different bars (325 people in attendance for the pub crawl - we were all split up into groups) eventually everyone met up at the lakeside where there was an Easter Egg hunt and a guy dressed up as the Easter Bunny.
We have decided to stay in Queenstown for the remainder of the NZ portion of the trip. I am hoping to do some road trips to Wanaka and Milford Sound still which are meant to be beautiful must see places in New Zealand.

Wishing everyone back home a very Happy Easter! It was wonderful being able to chat with so many family members this weekend. (Seriously craving some easter vanilla creams)
Love Colleen

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Comments

[Melissa]

Happy Be-Lated Easter!
Colleen, you are, by far, the cutest person on the planet and I'd like to meet the person that says otherwise. Love your blogs! and photos! Miss you tons! Looks like Easter was a blast in NZ, I def. love the Ginger poster. Have fun and be safe. Mel :D PS Spring shipping is upon us... EG, PBS... Ahhhhhhhhhhh. lol