Both Wanaka and Queenstown have beautiful lakes and mountain settings. The main difference is in size and buzz. Wanaka was our first stop and had more of a laid-back, small town feel but still had plenty to offer with the outdoor activities that we have come to expect from NZ. In this vein we decided to book our first skydive! We spent a few weeks umming and ahhing about it but decided to bite the bullet, so off we went and jumped out of a little plane at 12,000 feet! Whilst Dean loved the experience and his favourite part was the 45 seconds spent free falling at over 100mph before the stranger your strapped to gets the parachute up, I on the other hand was not a fan and enjoyed it more knowing we were floating down rather than falling as such! We celebrated after with a pub lunch (needed as we had not managed to eat breakfast due to nerves) before moving onto Queenstown.
In Queenstown it continued to be grey but the silver lining was that we stayed in a lovely campsite close to town where we made more friends with the local ducks and their babies (they loved us all the time we had bread to feed them!) Queenstown had the most energy of anywhere we have visited in NZ so far. It’s made up of tourists but is also known as the ‘global adventure capital’ with every kind of adrenaline inducing activity you can imagine from bungy jumping to paragliding. After our skydive we decided enough was enough and we chose to enjoy the buzz of Queenstown in the array of lovely restaurants and bars as well as admiring the stunning views via a trip up the Skyline Gondola. It was in one of these restaurants (Coyotes) that we met up with Stephen (Lauren’s brother) where we enjoyed a delightful Mexican meal followed by one of his cocktails of the month!
From Queenstown we drove for 4 hours to Milford Sound. Here it is all about the waterfalls and the scenery which is made up of huge rocky cliffs, lakes and forests clinging to the steep slopes. Unfortunately for us the weather was terrible, but I think you need to be lucky as on average the area gets 7m of rainfall a year, although it’s this very rainfall that creates the cascading waterfalls.
Next stop is the Edinburgh of NZ, Dunedin.
The Snow Adventures 