Queenstown - Adrenalin Capital of the World

We were only in Queenstown for a short overnight stay. Actually Queenstown is a little like the Olympic cities, lots or even most of the events take place outside the city itself. So no people jumping of bridges or tall buildings with elastic tied to their legs, instead lots of shops offering you the thrill of a lifetime. Queenstown is on the banks of New Zealand’s third largest lake, and we did see a couple of high speed jet boats that operate on or from the lake and one lonely boat towing two people paragliding.

The town is a pleasant enough lakeside town with a lot of construction going on, so no recession here then, or maybe the news just takes a long time to reach the lower end of New Zealand. This thought is enhanced by the sheer volume of estate agent shops in town with some pretty pricey property on show further backed up by the number of restaurants available. Then there are a few art shops with some very pricey pictures for sale. Finally there are a large number of shops catering to the adrenalin junkie either offering activities or clothes and equipment to do activities.

We wandered around looking at which restaurant we might choose for our evening meal and generally getting the lay of the land. I of course couldn’t resist the art shops, well that was until I saw the prices. Wow! We watched the paragliders and one of the jet boats come in and generally covered the ground. It was interesting and we found ourselves having to decide whether we went back to the hotel or just got a very early dinner as opposed to coming back down. We elected for the easy option, the early meal and went off to the fish restaurant, The Fishbone. We had a very pleasant meal of fish and chips washed down by a Riesling, not exectly like a traditional English fish and chips but then I think this was the first time I had a Riesling with fish and chips, actually not a bad combination.

Back at the hotel I managed to get my e-mail only to discover that the fax sent from Jo’burg relating to the fraud had never reached the bank so no reimbursement of my money. It was a good job we had eaten early as it took more than an hour just to sort that out. I am hopeful now that I will be reimbursed as I received confirmation from my bank the next morning that they were going to pay.

The next morning we were up reasonably early to await collection to commence our next activity, the journey to Milford Sound.

There is a postscript to this post. The next day having completed our safari to Milford Sound and having collected our Hire Car we were on our way to the Otago wine area when about 10 miles out of Queenstown we crossed a bridge over a very high gorge and seconds later spotted the bridge where bungy jumping had started and was actually going on right then. We had to stop and watch for a few minutes, well give my height thing I just found a spot where I could see them leap but not see where they leapt. Marion ventured down to the look out platform and was away so long that I half thought I would be seeing her step out with elastic tied to her legs. In the event she decided against it, perhaps she had never really considered it anyhow!