Sydney :: Australia
That's beautiful. Now let's find a way to let people jump off it.
Places: Queenstown, Gibbston, Te Anau & Milford Sound
Coolest thing I did: Finished an afternoon of whitewater rafting by going through 160m of disused mining tunnel directly off a small waterfall.
Coolest thing I didn't know: There's a place called Doubtful Sound, which would also make an awesome name for a karaoke bar.
Imagine landing a plane directly into the set of Lord of the Rings, only with less goblins and more stomach dropping excitement and you start to see how even coming into Queenstown airport gives you a feel for what's to come. The plane rattles between two mountain ranges as it drops down on the elbow of Lake Wakatipu and you are both inspired by the beauty of what you're seeing and also a bit concerned that those mountains do seem very close. New Zealand seems to be so comfortable with it's beauty that it's a country not just content to contemplate it, it literally wants to spend every moment possible getting as dangerously close as possible.
Sitting on the edge of a radiant blue alpine lake and surrounded by pine forest and mountains Queenstown immediately reminds you of similar alpine locations in Canada or Europe and like all those places it's transitioned well from being a town all about servicing the two big ski fields nearby in winter to being a year round resort. Unlike it's peers overseas however, it seems to have created something unique in that it's churns through massive amount of activity every day without you feeling too much like you're on a package tour, having not given up either efficiency or that personal touch in the process. We were there at the very peak of the summer season, over New Years and while the town felt busy, it never felt completely crowded.
Over the course of more than a week we steered a course somewhere between adventure and outright silliness, so there was hiking, mountain biking, jet boats & white water rafting but no bungy jumping. We also avoided getting in a helicopter at any point, which seems hard to do in modern Queenstown, where you can take any activity they already sell and add a helicopter ride to it. Probably our most Queenstown day involved driving up to the top of the Shotover river to the Cornet Ski field in order to go white water rafting. The minibus goes along a single lane road that reminded me very much of the Death Road in Bolivia, only it's also got a trailer with 4 rafts on it to make life more interesting. There a points where the bus hangs over the edge going around corners and it's hundreds of meters of vertical drop right out the window. That gets you to a point where rafts enter the rapids in one direction and jet boats go upriver the other direction, with helicopters dropping off people short of time and long on money to do one or the other. Then on the way down in the raft through class 3 and 4 rapids, guided by a man with a weapons-grade Kiwi accent you come under a point where there's someone doing an upside down canyon swing (kind of like a horizontal bungy jump) directly above you. I guess the next step to up the ante is to electrify the river or something.
Jetboats are something we have on Sydney Harbour but I suspect you really have to come to NZ to get the full effect of what they are designed for. Why bother tearing around big expanses of open water when you can instead be dodging sheer rock walls in a narrow canyon? These days you have to be given a warning by the driver that he's about to flip the boat around in a 360 degree turn so you can brace yourself, but pretty much anything else goes. The boats seem to be able to operate on any water deep enough to get water into the jets, which seems to be measured in low digits of inches and the drivers like pulling away from walls at the last second or spraying water allover the whole boat with sharp fishtail turns. He reckons they run all year round and people come down in their ski gear and have a go when the water droplets snap freeze in the wind chill. I suspect that's a brave, select few.
Queenstown has mountain bike trails forever, however the main one that comes off the Gondola leading directly out of town is closed for the two weeks around Christmas and New Year to keep the numbers sane, so if that's the main reason for coming out it's probably best to do a different time in summer. Instead we decided on a serene 40km bike ride out to drink wine at the wineries and found that even that was more work than expected. Gravel trails wind out of Queenstown in each direction and the ones up to Gibbston and Arrowtown (which we didn't visit) take in lovely stretches of river along the way. There seems to be completely unnecessary hills along the way, but I suspect that's more so if you know what you're doing you can ride up just one of them and then build up enough speed tearing down the other side to keep moving all the way. On the way you cross the Kawarau Bridge, where bungy jumping was born and is still the most popular place to do it. I don't quite get the appeal myself, but it's an awesome thing to behold some massive American unit being smashed into the river waist deep at the bottom.
Our only super tourist day was to take the 14 hour round trip out to Milford Sound, which is pretty much the end of the road and none of us could see ourselves coming back to do it another time. The trip out was in one of the new breed of tour buses, with glass and carbon fibre making up the bulk of the top of the bus you can see a lot on the 5 hour drive out anyway, and though it was unfortunately raining and overcast on the ride out, it did mean you get to see some stunning scenery on the way back. It was a similar story on the boat ride on Milford Sound, but you do get that nice eerie sight of layers of cliff in silhouette gliding out of the fog towards you. The whole thing reminded me a lot of the Fjords in Patagonia. With good reason, apparently Milford Sound is actually a Fjord, not a Sound and whichever fool named it (I'm looking at you, Captain John Lort Stokes) didn't know the difference between a Fjord and a Sound. Amateur.
On the plus side is we did get to see far more waterfalls than otherwise and while we were turning around in the Tasman on for the hour stretch back the rain stopped and we got to see the mountains slowing poking their heads out of the clouds on the way back. This being New Zealand of course they decide the best thing to do is drive the boat right up to the waterfall so everyone on the deck gets soaked. Again, why just look at something when you could add an element of danger to it?
While in Queenstown you do get the sense that it's a party town for kids, and on that front it doesn't disappoint. The couple of days leading up to New Years was mental with young back packers showing off their ill-decided new tattoos or the GoPro video of their Helibiking and it was kind of like being the Ghost of Christmas Future watching them all - I know what your future holds, but it's really important you do all the stupid stuff yourself while your bones still heal. However we did find the range of eating and drinking outstanding. You can either line up for a Fergburger during one of the 21 hours they are open (and that's an experience in itself) or have award wining lamb or steak in a proper grown up restaurant with some of Otago's finest Pinot. You can get smashed on Export Gold and then go fight some dudes outside the kebab shop, or you can try some of the really quite excellent Kiwi Beers (Mac's Sassy Red is outstanding). It's that range that makes the town so interesting - it's caters so well to every taste and budget that I'm scratching my head to think of a town that does this kind of Alpine tourism much better.
I was quite amazed by Queenstown, and the South Island in general, but I think the thing that holds it together so well is just how nice the service industry is there, whether it's the multi-season local Kiwis who hold the more skilled jobs or the transient backpacker workforce. Even during the strain of New Years everyone we came in contact with was really friendly and helpful and only threw minor Aussie barbs our way (the subtle dig about Milford having so much rain because of the hot air rising of Australia was nicely done). It think it's one of the few places I've been recently where I wouldn't hesitate to come back and see a bit more, either outside the Christmas peak in summer to ride some more bikes or even back for the snow, which would add another dimension to it all.