A day in Queenstown

March 26, 2010


Well like the weather, plans change, as a matter of fact plans change because of the weather. We got up early ready to fly only to find out our Milford sound flight was cancelled. While it looked all right in Queenstown apparently the sound was closed in and windy and no planes could fly in. We swallowed our disappointment, rearranged our itinerary and rebooked for Sunday – the long range forecast for the area looks good. As this is the start of fall we have been warned that the weather is not something you can rely on and so far we have been pretty lucky. This left us with a day to enjoy some of the local sites which started with a gondola ride up the Remarkables. About 300 meters behind our campsite the mountains literally rear up almost vertically. They have strung a gondola cable straight up the mountain behind us at what looks like a 70 degree angle. Suffice to say that the ride makes your palms itch but the view from the top is spectacular looking up and down the lake and all around the surrounding peaks. From the top is also where a number of extreme sports take place. You can bungy jump, bungy swing, parasail or luge – we chose to luge. The luge course is a concrete track of twists, turns and tunnels that you ride on a small wheeled sled controlled with handlebars like a bike. The run is just shy of a kilometer and at the end you grab a chair lift that also hauls your sled up with you. We started with the scenic run but of course nothing would do but for Connor to do the advanced track as well. It was a blast!

We had a lovely lunch at our campsite made up of locally made bread and several New Zealand cheeses we bought in town. It was then off to the mini-golf course. This is the most amazing mini-golf I have ever seen. It is indoor and made up of over 1000 hand-made miniatures. Each hole has a theme (airport, space port, gold mine, etc.) and all the scenery and models are custom built, it is like playing on a model train set. Every hole also was animated so things moved, made sounds and played music depending on where your ball went. The course also was hard and none of us got more than a couple of holes at par. While you don’t come to New Zealand to play mini-golf, this was a unique experience. We toured the ‘mall’ which is the main shopping street down by the harbour then went home for a quiet supper of local cod and N.Z. scallops – delicious. While the weather report is not favourable for tomorrow we are up and out early for our Safari of the Scenes, a 4WD experience into the bush to visit some of the stunning sites where Peter Jackson filmed the Lord of the Rings.