I spent the last three days here in Queenstown, which is pretty much New Zealand’s tourist capital. It feels almost like one of the Swiss resort towns, including the beautiful scenery – and the prices… I spent the first day wandering around the town and taking a gondola ride. Yesterday I went skiing in nearby Cadrona, big for kiwi standards but tiny for Europeans. Still, the weather was gorgeous and the snow good. Today I went on a Lord of the Rings location tour to Glenorchy at the end of Lake Waikatipu, which was very lovely as well. You can’t go much more beautiful than here, really…
I’ve also been quite the social butterfly, meeting up with people I’d met in Te Anau (Misato from the hostel and Charlotte and Miriam from the Doubtful Sound tour) as well as hanging out with people met here at the YHA (American sisters Ziba and Vija from my dorm room and Aussie Dave from the Cardrona tour).
As always, you can find more photos here on Flickr.
What I haven’t managed in 10 days of traveling yet is calling my parents. The next few days I’ll be in Franz Josef, staying with my friend Kevin, who’s a glacier guide there, then I’m heading further up the west coast, one of my favorite parts of New Zealand. We’ll see how the internet situation will be…