Queenstown!

Whoops! OK, so it’s been quite a while since Ive updated this.

So, Queenstown…

When we got there, we bumped into some people we’d met in Wanaka and elsewhere on my bus trip. They had just come back for a day out in a mini van, so we were able to wangle a lift to our hostels with all our bags – good stuff. We went out that evening to a bar called The World bar as they had free drinks and offers on cocktails in teapots – yummy!

The next morning was spent recovering from the hangover, but in the afternoon I went for a walk along the side of the lake and into the park. I watched people playing Frisbee golf, which consists of throwing Frisbees into these metal poles with chains round them forming a sort of net for you to get your Frisbee in. Looked fun! In the evening we went to the pub to walk the all blacks vs south aftica. It was a good match.

The next day we went to the Pig & Whistle pub for Sunday lunch, and I met up with my friend Clare from South America & Auckland. After lunch me, Anna, Adam and Clare went up in the gondolas up the mountain to go Lugeing. It was good fun. On the final luge run down, we had a race and I’m happy to say I put Adam in his place by thrashing him :)

The next day, me and Clare booked our AJ Hackett activities. I’d booked to do the Nevis Bungy jump and Clare was going to do the Nevis arc (a big swing across a canyon). That afternoon we headed over to the lake to buy tickets for the TSS Earnslaw which is a big old steamer that’s about 100 years old. It was a really nice old boat and you could look around the engine rooms and there was a nice old-fashioned saloon downstairs. The steamer took us to Walter Peak farm and we had a look round there, got told about some sheep, deer, highland cows and saw a sheep dog display and a sheep shearing demonstration and a nice afternoon tea with lots of cakes :) After the boat took us back, me and Clare went for a glass or two of mulled wine to warm ourselves up. We went out to Winnies pizza bar for tea that night which was really nice, plus they accidentally made us medium pizzas instead of small ones – bonus!

Next day was bungy jump day. When we were reporting in the office for our respective jumps and swings, we both decided that we wanted to do both so we changed our bookings so we could do a tandem nevis arc. Im glad we did, the arc was brilliant fun! I’m glad I did it with Clare. We asked the blokes strapping us in what the scariest way to do the swing was (you can go forward, backwards, upside down etc etc), so we opted for the scariest which was upside down and backwards. It was brilliant! The canyon is massive and you free fall for about 70m before starting to swing across the canyon.

The bungy jump came next… all 134m of it. Clare went first and she looked like a right pro, jumped right off with no worries at all. It all went quite quick and I didn’t feel ready to do it, I was shaking a lot and didn’t want to let go of the man on the ledge! Bet I did it all the same. It was ok, but I feel annoyed with myself that I was all nervous and didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. Perhaps I’m going to have to do another one and do it properly next time…

After our adrenaline fuelled morning, we felt a Fergburger was called for.

The next day me and Clare went to Arrowtown for the day. It was quite fun when we finally got there after the bus issues to give us our tickets. We had a good look round the shops and went gold panning in the river. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything :(

That evening was mine and Clares last night together, so we went out for a very posh meal. We started with haggis, neeps and tatties and then I had some lamb. It was very scrummy.

The next morning, me and Clare both got on our respective busses to Christchurch and Dunedin and said bye :(