We're pretty sure, judging by google maps, that Queenstown is the furthest south in the world that we have ever been, and it will be the furthest south that we go during our travels as from now everything we do is slowly working our way north back home. We arrived in Queenstown in the pitch black following our tour to Mount Cook, so all we could really make out from the bus was the lights of the houses and then the main road as we crossed over to get to our hostel - it was raining and cold we didn't hang around much at first. Our tour guide had said that the Queenstown airport is only operational during daylight hours, because the surrounding mountains make it much too dangerous for pilots to fly in or out at night, so we didn't really know what to expect. We had a nice lie in the next morning, and when we finally opened the curtains we had a lovely surprise - our hostel was in the middle of town surrounded by snow covered mountains on 3 sides, and a crystal clear blue lake on the other side! We got some photos from our balcony, and then had a bit of admin to sort out before we could explore, making use of the free phonecalls from the hostel (they give you pretty much everything for free here!) to confirm our flight to fiji in just over a weeks time. Once that was sorted we headed out to look around - the town has a lovely feel, it's quite small but has loads of shops and cafes, and you can tell it is a proper skiing town. It is really different to anywhere we visited in Australia, and feels a lot more European which is a nice change. We started off by having a late breakfast at a cafe round the corner from our hostel, which we got a 10% discount at by showing our room keys (we'll go anywhere we can get a discount!). We then headed down the main street to do a bit of souvenir shopping, and ended up by Lake Wakatipu. We walked along the lake shore and then headed into the Queenstown Gardens to do the lakeside walk - it's pretty cold here but the weather today was lovely and sunny, so the views of the lake and the surrounding mountains were stunning. From there we walked up to see how much it would cost to take a cable car up to the top of the mountain, but unfortunately it was too expensive for our budget so we came back down into the township to buy some food. Afterwards we went back to the hostel for a bit to relax and warm ourselves up, before going back out to have a look at the shops in the Mall. We went back down to the lake again and got hot drinks to enjoy while sitting by the water looking at the ducks (which are much bigger than the ones at home!) and the boats (there was one boat shaped like a shark that could go underwater and then jump clean out of the water! Too expensive for us though). By this time the clouds were starting to roll in, so it was back to the hostel again to avoid getting rained on. This is perhaps the most scenic place we have stayed in, if only we had a little longer!