Day 5: Fun and Excitement in Queenstown

As I said in my previous post Queenstown is known for its high adrenaline type activities and this was the day to try them out. Unfortunately there was only time to do 2 activities one in the morning and one in the afternoon so I chose horseback riding through Lord of the Rings country and then hang gliding in the afternoon.

We got picked up right from the hotel and it was off to Dart Stables in Glenorchy which is about a 30 minute drive out of Queenstown.

After getting our boots, helmets, horses and a brief riding lesson from the instructors we were off.

Because of their well trained horses as well as their close location to Queenstown many of the Dart Stable horses were used in the making of the Lord of the Rings movies. The scenery during the tour was quite beautiful, we went through the forest where they shot many of the elven forest scenes, we also saw the area where Saruman tower was filmed (the tower itself was CG'ed in later).

After about an hour of riding it was back to Queenstown in time for lunch.

For the second part of my day I planned to go tandem hang gliding. In tandem hang gliding you take off in the hang glider alongside an experienced hang glider.

After getting all of our gear together we drove a short distance south of Queenstown onto a set of mountains called The Remarkable's. We drove up and up and up until we reached a flat area of the mountain which was covered in grass.

I think that most people imagine hang gliding as running off the edge of a cliff in a hang glider. This wasn't the case for us, we actually ran down the side of a hill.

The idea is to synchronize your steps with your gliding partner and start running down the hill, you then keep running until you don't feel any ground beneath your feet anymore; it's quite a feeling.

Day 4: Queenstown

After our tour of Milford Sound we gathered our things off of the boat and headed towards Queenstown. The town of Queenstown is interesting because it's a very small town with a few big town elements to it. There are some unique bars and shops to visit but Queenstown is mostly known for its high adrenaline type activities, everywhere you turn there are activities to be done for all ages and styles. On our tour we had a choice of doing anywhere from 0 - 3 activities in the time we had. Activities included skydiving, hangliding, wine tasting tours, speedboating, bungy jumping, horseback riding to name a few.

We arrived at our hotel, the Rydges, by early afternoon which we later found out to be the place where the crew of Lord of the Rings stayed.

The hotel overlooked the river and was just a few blocks away from the main town area. Overhead you could see the mountains surrounding the little town and above that you could see people parachuting.

As nice as the Rydges was, one of the odd things about it were the faucets, one cold and one hot. According to my research this is an old style for setting up sinks which is odd to me why they would be this way however I noticed that this seems to be the standard in New Zealand; in fact Australia has a few sinks in ths style too.

We were left to our own devices for the rest of the afternoon and I took the opportunity to meet with my flatmate Elena who was also traveling around New Zealand on a different trip as well as look at the Queenstown shops. Queenstown is a good spot to do your souvenir shopping and postcard sending because they have lots of places to do both; sometimes you can even do both in one place.

Later that night most of the people on my tour went out to a bar called Minus 5 Degrees which has been nicknamed the "ice bar" because of it's chilly interior. They have ice sculptures which are changed once a week inside the bar and you get a parka and mitts as part of your cover charge to enter the bar.

And thus we ended our day in Queenstown with more fun activities planned for the next day.

Christchurch - Where it all Began

I arrived in Christchurch at around 11pm and took a shuttle into town to the hostel where I'd be staying that night. As we drove along the road it was interesting to see how the architecture had changed; these houses were much closer to what I'm familiar with, they were built with brick compared to the old Queenslanders I've been seeing for the past year which are much more "flimsy" looking (at least to me).