Our next major stopover on the South Island is Queenstown – the adrenaline capital of the world!! We did make a few stops along the way to get here though including Wanaka – a small town on the edge of one of the larger lakes here in NZ and Kawarau Bungee Centre which was the first commercial Bungee Jump site in the world! We spent a couple of hours here with a few of our group doing the bungee jump – we decided not too…..this time at least!

We were staying in Nomad’s in Queenstown which is one of the livelier hostels but it was good! To be honest we were just glad of a bed as the whole of Queenstown was full! Queenstown is also the main Ski town in NZ and after a massive dump of snow a couple of weeks ago everyone was down here – it was packed!! It is such a cute town though – really like the stereotypical ski towns you see on TV, and with all the snow and cold weather it felt like it was Christmas! We had a group night out that first night with Pizza, a pub quiz and a few beers…it was a good laugh but most of the people out in town looked around 16 so we felt old here! Seemed like most of them were on their first holiday without their families and they were all going mad – honestly….kids these days!!!!

We were staying here in Queenstown for 4 nights which will be one of the longest stopovers we will do in NZ but it still wasn’t long enough to do everything here….plus it’s a lot more expensive than most other places we have been to in NZ so far. We had planned to ski/snowboard but decided against it as it seemed pretty pointless for one day – we would have to wait for another time and maybe look at a cheap week somewhere in Europe to get the hang of it properly! We played Frisby Golf with our group which was a laugh, had a couple of nights out and spent a day just doing very little apart from laundry and updating the website.

We do have to mention Fergberger though! This Burger Bar is world famous – everyone who goes to Queenstown eats in it and everyone says it is the best burger they have ever eaten and they are all correct – it was AMAZING! We both grabbed lunch in here during one of our relaxed days and didn’t need to eat again until the next morning – it was some feed! Anyone reading this that is going to be in Queenstown at some stage make sure you visit this place – you will not regret it!

On our final full day we booked onto a trip called the Shotover Jet Boat – “The World’s Most Exciting Jet Boat Ride” and it was class. It’s basically a jet boat ride similar to the one we did in Sydney but through a canyon at up to speeds of 90 km per hour. The boat feels like it is on rails with our driver Matt sliding it sideways sometimes only 2 feet from the rock face – it was amazing! The boat only needs 4 inches of water to operate so at points of the ride you could feel the bottom bounding over the rocks! No cameras were allowed unfortunately so we couldn’t get any photos of the ride and the DVD’s were a bit pricey so we’ll just have to show you videos online when we are back!

After the jet boat ride we went up in the cable car to the top of the mountain beside Queenstown. The views up here were amazing – every place we have stopped in NZ just seems to have spectacular scenery, it really is the most beautiful place we have ever been! We got a few snaps, a coffee and a piece of chocolate cake and made our way down before our final night out with Laura and Francis and a couple of others from the group who were moving on over the next couple of days. We had a few $4 drinks in a bar called Frasers before grabbing some pizza and returning to Frasers later that night. It was great fun but we were sorry to see Laura & Francis and Katie go – hopefully we can meet up with them when we are back home and have a couple of good nights out with them down in Dublin!!

We had to call it a night reasonably early as we were up at 5:30am to leave Queenstown for Milford Sound in the morning. Queenstown is a cool place with a really great atmosphere but you really need a bit more time and a lot more money than we had to fully explore all it has to offer but sure that gives us a reason to come back at some point!!!

Craig and Laura = )