Not a huge day today, we travelled only about 80 km to Queenstown over the Crown Range, winding up through some steep valleys to the high pass where we looked down on Lake Wakatipu where Queenstown is nestled. The big hills had some spectacular skylines with patches of remaining ice dotted about in places.
The country side is extremely dry compared with the West coast and has very few trees, but a number of interesting wildflowers and strange spiky plants as well as large areas of pretty tussocky grass covering the hillsides.
Queenstown itself is a tourist hotspot, mainly for younger people because of all the water based activities such as jet boats, kayaking and skiing. There were multiple paragliders hovering above the city centre and lots of gift shops and restaurants in the town. We did wander through an art gallery which showed mainly local artists’ work, and we even saw some of the pottery created by our hosts from the previous night’s stay in Hawea. Georgie feels that Queenstown is a lively and vibrant town.
Queenstown is the main business centre for this area and is the jumping-off point for many tours to Milford Sound. We plan to stay one night here then drive the almost couple of hundred kilometres to Te Anau where we will stay again before doing the Milford Sound thing. Te Anau is on the edge of the Fiordland National Park and is the closest town to all the popular Sounds.
We have been told that the drive of about 120 km from Te Anau to Milford is really spectacular and should be well worth it.
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You have done more than us in Queensland, we drove straight through but Joe did do the bungee jump just outside. You’ll love the sound, so worth the day trip going down it.
We also had a crazy time at the glacier. Friends ran a travel place and said they would try and get us on a helicopter ride. Half way through breakfast in the campervan we got the call. Joe unhooked quickly and I was frantically trying to save crockery as he drove to a meeting point, we were given 10mins to do it and went up on the first trip for almost a week due to weather.. so lucky there were 2 spaces. Joe, of course, just had shorts on…