Another weekend of Fun

This past weekend we decided to go to Queenstown which is the tourist center of New Zealand. There are so many things to do there. We decided on a few activities for the weekend, knowing that we will be headed back there before our stay is over.

We started by going on a chilly Jetboat tour of Lake Wakatipu and the Shotover River. It was a little cold, so they had us wear big raincoats because we did get wet on some of the turns. The boat went really fast and it was a lot of fun. Our guide pointed out a few things along the way, including the Remarkables. This is the only mountain range to run true north and south. They are also the peaks that were used in the filming of the Lord of the Rings for the mountains of Mordor. We got to sit right in the front of the boat which we thought meant we were going to get the wettest, but we ended up staying pretty dry compared to some of the other passengers.

Later in the afternoon we went on a ziptrek tour. We started by riding the gondalas to the top of Gondala Hill. Our tour consisted of a series of four ziplines through the trees and a little talk about keeping the environment healthy. We got a few pictures of us in our harnesses that were used and realized that we have gotten pretty used to having weird harnesses and helmets on for several of our activities. Our guided showed us how to flip upside down and ride the zipline. I was able to do this for one of the lines. The final line went the fastest and lasted the longest, but since it has the best views they told us it was best to ride this one normal. Our one guide also told us that the line would probably spin us around to the right but to just let in go and it would spin you on around. After I took off I spun to the right, but then just kind of stayed there pointing the trees rather than the beautiful views of the town and lake. The guide on the other side asked how the zip went, and I told him I just saw a lot of trees. He responded well why didn’t you just look to the left, he was supposed to tell you that! I did get a short video of this zipline, but it just shows mainly the trees.

Sunday morning, we headed back up Gondala Hill and got some amazing pictures of the view from the top. We then did the Luge where you go around this track in a little cart that has bicycle handles. They made you do one trip on the slow track so we did a second one to do the faster track. It had several little hills and sharp turns that made it a lot of fun.

We also walked around the town and did some shopping and tried a Fergburger for lunch. We were told by our ziptrek tourguide that it would be the best burger we would ever have. Of course, being from Iowa, we didn’t believe this for a second but thought we should at least try one. It was actually pretty good, but definitely not the best. We also spent a good amount of time feeding some very friendly ducks along the edge of the lake. On Saturday a lady came by with a whole bag of little cookies for us to feed to a group of ducks. They would come up and eat them right out of my hand, and there were so many of them! They were awfully greedy though and would try to steal them from each other or our bag. We also fed them some of our fries after each meal we had in town.