Queenstown (Part 1)

This weekend marked the halfway point of my time in New Zealand and to celebrate I went to Queenstown with my intern friends Ray and Micah.

We flew in Thursday morning and the view of the mountains blew me away as soon as my feet hit the tarmac. Every time. You'd think seeing mountains would be less of a big deal after 5 weeks, but no. Also, these are Different mountains so that's got to count for something.

Queenstown (henceforth called Qtown, for my typing convenience) is in the southwest of the south island, between the Southern Alps and Fiordland National Park, and those names should give you a pretty good idea of the scenery. Qtown sits on Lake Wakatipu and on the other side of the lake are the Remarkables, a truly remarkable mountain range. They are the only mountains to point exactly north and south and when the sun sets behind them the sky turns a lovely shade of purple. The town is a basically a tourist destination, and with it being school holidays here and in Australia the town was keeping plenty busy. The main attraction is the ski fields around the city, but other tourist attractions have sprung up. Skydiving, bungy jumping, and parasailing are all popular excursions but I didn't do any of them. The closest I got was a zipline, but more on that later.

We didn't have many plans for Thursday so we walked around town and looked in the tourist shops. They all have the same things so after a while it was just a reason to step out of the cold for a few minutes. I did buy some sunglasses though.  We went to the Below Zero Ice Bar and enjoyed ourselves despite the low temperatures. There were ice sculptures, a gas fire in an ice fireplace, and even a little ice hockey table.  Next on the agenda was the Skyline Gondola. The gondola takes you to the top of the mountain behind Qtown (I think it's technically a hill, but it looked like a mountain to me) to the Skyline complex, which has a shop, restaurants, a viewing deck, and a luge track. We had a good ride around the track in our little gravity powered carts. I came in last, but we weren't really racing. For lunch we ate at the Fergburger, which apparently is quite famous, and for good reason! Every time we walked past the line was out the door but the wait is worth it.

There were a couple of Mexican restaurants in town, and those are not very common in NZ so we figured we had to put one to the test. I got a duck enchilada with mole sauce and I don't care if it was 'authentic' because it sure was delicious. Our waiter was an American guy from PA that moved to NZ a few months ago instead of going to law school and we had a nice chat.

On Friday Ray went skiing and Micah and I had our own adventures! What we had planned originally was cancelled because of the weather, but there was plenty more to do. We went to Arrowtown in the morning and had a much bigger adventure in the afternoon.

Arrowtown is a small town not far from Qtown which boomed in 1862 when gold was discovered. Now it's home to local farmers and primarily tourists. Everything is still set up in quaint little mining town buildings. Outside of town is a historical site of the Chinese Miner's Village. I think some of the buildings are reconstructions from the village that was empty in the 1920s. The Chinese were initially invited into town for gold mining, but once a large group of them arrived they were treated badly by the white people and set up their own village outside of town. Some of the buildings set up were proper houses made of stone, but some were just sheets of metal and wood stuck in the side of the mountain. It's a little lower in the valley than the rest of town so it was few degrees colder and a layer of snow was on the ground. I don't know how they did it. Micah and I had lunch and bought some fudge, after sampling quite a few flavors I settled on a chunk of creme brulee and a chunk red velvet with cheesecake layers. Oh yes.

I think I will end here for now, and put the rest in a part 2. I've added pictures to both, and plenty more in the album (click on the thumbnails to the right)!