Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Queenstown is the busiest and most touristy place in New Zealand, there are hardly any Kiwis there, and as the ski season starts on the 7th of June all the workers were starting to arrive so it was quite good timing. (Makes a change) .We arrived in Queenstown at around half 7 pm went straight to the 'Base' and 'Nomads' hostels where the kiwi bus people stay to see if we could park in the car park but they didn't have car parks so had to settle for a campsite. Like usual we hid one in the back of the van and only paid for two people but unfortunately we got caught out the next morning, but we blagged it so we still looked innocent and we still saved one night for one person. The rest of the stay we had to pay for all three of us.
We stayed in the first night after getting sorted. The next day we had a wonder around town and into the I-Site to see what there was to do in Queenstown. We already knew Tim wanted to do his free bungee jump, then we decided we wanted to also do the gondola up the mountain, luge down the mountain, a canyon swing and a coach/boat tour of Milford Sound which is voted the most beautiful place in the world. Ben looked in a couple of tattoo parlours enquiring about his Māori tattoo, and ended up deciding we was going to start the next day for two full days. Whilst walking around during the day we bumped into Lawrence and his girlfriend, Lloyd and Tim went to school with Lawrence and had maybe seen him once since, Ben seemed to think he had met him too, maybe through football we thought. We knew through twitter that he was in Queenstown for the ski season so did plan to meet up at one point. We arranged to meet him at 3 o'clock when Harrys pool bar opened, he suggested it as it was $5 beers which isn't bad.
We wandered round the town a bit more and were getting a bit bored, then we saw a place called 'The Haunted House' we thought we'd see what it was all about, the bloke said it was $35 to walk through the haunted house, and it would take 20-25 minutes. There's a sign on the wall saying the amount of people that had 'chickened out' in the last 11 months and it was over 3000. We were thinking yeah right, it can't be that bad, how very wrong we were, it was the scariest thing ever, all three of us were screaming and jumping the whole way round. It is pitch black the whole way round with little red lights on the ceiling that you have to follow, Ben went first then Lloyd and Tim, but we had to walk around with our hands on each other's shoulders so we didn't lose each other. There are things jumping out at you the whole way round, touching you, creeping up on you, little ghost girls whispering Bens name to come and play, the lot. The last bit one of the actors chases you through a door back into the reception, so as were all running and screaming out of the door into reception anyone waiting there would think bloody hell it must be scary. After getting out we were not surprised so many people had 'chickened out'. We suggested this to everyone we met in Queenstown after. Really worth the 35 bucks.
At three we met Lawrence in Harrys put a load of $2 coins on one of the pool tables and got a round in. It was only supposed to be a couple of beers but inevitably it turned into a bit of a session. It was good to have a catch up with Lawrence, talking about what we've been up to since school and old times. A bit later his girlfriend and another couple they live with joined us and had a few drinks. At around 7/8 we left them as we planned on meeting Shaun and Nathan in Loco bar at 9, not before getting a cheeky $5 pizza from dominoes for dinner.
A bit later we headed to Loco bar where we met Nathan and Shaun, ben stayed in as he didn't want to be hangover for 8 hours of tattooing the next day. We bumped into a lot of other people off of different Kiwi busses we had met around New Zealand as well and they all know each other as well which is quite good. After a few drinks in Loco we moved on to a club called The Find, the bouncers are so hot on ID over here and if you look a little bit too drunk they wont let you in. We were all fine getting in, not that we were at all sober. The club was rammed, we hadn't seen so many people in one place since Thailand. Everyone was right about Queenstown! We finished the night in The Find, this was to happen most nights this week!
Ben woke up early the next morning and left to get his tattoo started. We thought we'd get stuff out the way that Ben didn't want to do while he was getting tattooed. So we went to the bridge that Tim was to jump off for free. We went the wrong way at first as the bloke in the shop told us the completely wrong way even though he works for them which was weird. We got there in the end a little bit late but Tim got straight on, we were literally only there 20 minutes, no mucking around. The bungy jump is the smallest yet at 44m but it is the first ever bungy jump in New Zealand and a classic. This jump is also a water dunk jump and as we didn't hit the water last time when we done it tandem, Tim was hoping he'd hit it this time. He leaped off and the hoping worked as he was dunked up to his chest in the freezing water.
After the bungy we checked in on Ben and he only had half hour left so we decided when he was finished we would go up the gondola and go on the Luge. The view got better and better the whole way up the gondola, then when we got to the top we went to the viewing platform and it was amazing, we all agreed it was probably the best view we had seen, it was to only get better for Lloyd and Tim a few days later. We then went up another chair lift to the Luge area. The Luge are little go-kart sort of things, and you steer and brake with the handle bars, steering is obvious, but to brake we had to pull the handle bars towards us. We had a small lesson on how to drive them and then we set off down the track. We picked up some good speed, but you really do need to brake at the corners, Lloyd nearly found that out the hard way on the first corner but managed to recover.
That night Tim and Lloyd had arranged to meet Shaun and Nathan outside their hostel to go buy some pre-drinks and then pre-drink in their room. Ben had another night in as he had another tattoo session the next day. The cheapest way to pre-drink is to drink wine, so we all got a bottle each, snuck them into the hostel and saw them off in the lads room before heading to the first bar, Searle Lane, for happy hour which was $3 beers and $4 jagerbombs, cheap, cheap! We then went to Loco for a bit and then to The Find (this would be the routine most nights). However this time we must have not looked as sober as the night before as they wouldn't let us in as they thought we had had too much. The bouncers are sound though and began to recognise us over the nights and we got along with them. Luckily as its Queenstown there's more than one place that's busy so we finished our night in a bar called Buffalo which was also good.
The next morning Lloyd and Tim were supposed to be up and waiting outside the reception to the campsite at 7.30 for a coach and boat trip to Milford sound, but we completely slept through it. Whoops, 120 bucks down the drain…. Or not, bring out the blagging skills again! When we finally got up at around 1 ish we looked at our ticket and realised that it said the pick up point was another campsite, not ours. We asked at the campsite reception whether a bus turned up that morning and she said it didn't, it was all working out well, so we went to the I-Site, spoke to lady we booked it with, saying that she wrote the wrong pick up point, after a bit off disagreeing it turned out that we had pointed at the wrong campsite on the map. She rang up the company anyway and they fitted us in on another trip on the Monday, without us losing any money! Massive result, especially as the weather was horrible and rainy that day as well.
As it was raining we decided to give the indoor mini golf a go. It was actually really good, 18 holes all with different routes to get to the hole and you'd never know where you're ball would end up, could be a sitter or behind another obstacle. Some of the holes even had gondolas and ski chair lifts you'd hit your ball into then it would get taken up and dropped somewhere else. Tim won after some disastrous holes from Lloyd.
Ben had a couple of days off of tattooing now so he was to experience his first night out in Queenstown. We invited Nathan and Shaun to our Van for pre-drinks, bit colder than their room but we didn't have to hide alcohol from the hostel workers there. After we saw off the wine we went to the same three places as the nights before, Searle lane for cheap drinks then to Loco and The Find. We all got in everywhere fine tonight which was good. Another beaut night. Must be starting to sound like Asia again but were just making up for all the crap nights out in New Zealand!
Once again we all woke up and it was pissing it down again. Like everywhere else there's not a lot to do when it's raining but there is a swimming pool kind of like Leisure world and it was only $8 so we went to check that out, the three of us and Nathan and Shaun. Ben had to keep his tattoo dry so had to miss out again, there was a rugby and football match on outside so he watched them, he said the football standard was terrible. Us 4 just chilled out in the pool chatting about the nights before, football, birds the usual. When we got hungry we went and found Ben, we all decided to go FergBurger which is a burger bar we had all been recommended to go to. Some say they're the best burgers in the world, and we don't think they're far off. They do all sorts of different ones but we all went for the 'Chief Wiggum' which was mainly Pork Belly, it had crackling in it, hash brown and all the trimmings, and they are huge! We were all done over after that so went to our separate bases to chill out before another night out. The other two came to the van again and we played some drinking games we hadn't played before but were very effective! After we had finished our drink it was back to the usual three bars, but this time we carried on playing drinking games for the first two bars. It was hard seeing as us three were the new boys but we done well and we all lost just as much as each other. Once again we finished the night in The Find. The next day was probably the laziest day off the whole four months, we just stayed in the camper all day in bed for the majority of it, we couldn't even be bothered to cook and got a dominoes, which Shaun and Nathan joined us for! We all planned on staying in that night and watching a film in our campsite TV room but couldn't get it to work so it was early nights all round. That was a good thing though as Tim and Lloyd had to be up early for the Milford Sound trip and Ben had to be up for his third session on his tattoo, then a 35 hour journey home!
Lloyd and Tim were first up and noticed that there had been about 4 inches of snow overnight, we said our goodbyes to ben as we won't be seeing him for 8 months now even though after seeing the weather we thought we would be back in 20 minutes after finding out that it had been cancelled! We were wrong though as in NZ they can handle a bit of snow and the roads were all ploughed and clear. The coach took around 5 hours and the driver talks most of the way through it about what you are seeing out of the windows, we must admit we had a little sleep at one point as we were still knackered from the early wake up. The views were all amazing though. We stopped a couple of times on the way, once for a bit of lunch and then another time for a short walk to see a mirror lake. There was a road closure due to the weather on the way but luckily it opened about 10 minutes after we joined the back of the queue. When we got to Milford we all jumped on the big catamaran and set sail down the river, the river is salt water at the bottom and fresh water at the top and changes colour depending on how much rainfall there has been. The boat goes out for an hour and then back. Along the way we saw loads of waterfalls, including what we thought was the best one we had seen so far, it was 164 metres high, and the boat goes right up to it so if you are on the outer decks (which we obviously were) you get soaked by all the spray which is a bit of an experience, the noise the water makes hitting the river is so loud. We also saw loads of different snow covered mountains, which looked amazing across the water. We were really lucky with the weather, it was still freezing cold but the sun was out and it wasn't raining, also the fresh snow on all of the mountains just made them look even better. The coach ride back didn't take as long as there was no commentary, it wouldn't have been much help anyway as it was dark most of the way back. We got back just after 8 and had a real quick turnaround as we had arranged to meet the boys at their hostel for pre drinks, we were also meeting two of the three girls who we travelled a lot of Asia with ( Charlotte and Kelly ) in the same hostel. We knocked for the boys then went to the girls room, they were with quite a few people from their bus, after all the introductions and catch ups, we started drinking, taught all the lads the rules to the drinking games we were playing the night before and in the end set off to, yep you guessed it, the same three places again. It probably sounds really repetitive on here but it is actually a really good night out. It's not the same faces every night as people are always coming and going. Everyone got on well and we had another beaut night.
We had kind of sorted out with Shaun and Nathan that we would give them a lift to Christchurch the next day and then we could stay at their friends house that they were going to be staying at. Nathan was up and ready to get the bus but Shaun was a little worse for wear and couldn't get up so in the end the four of us set off on the 6 hour road trip to Christchurch. That was not before Tim and Lloyd wanted to get one more adrenaline rush out of Queenstown. We went back up the gondola, this time the views were even more amazing because of the snow. The reason for going up the gondola was to do the canyon swing, its exactly what it says on the tin really. We were suspended above the mountain in a harness, then after the count lf three, we had to pull a red release toggle, as soon as this is released we free fell about 50m then we swung right over all the trees, at the highest point of the swing we felt so high and could see everything all round us. We are becoming a bit immune to being scared of these things now, but that feeling of falling never gets old!
- comments