Lake Wakatipu & Queenstown

In the picture, you can also see that the travel guide for the Lake Wakatipu area suggests a lot of activities (the small numbers). No wonder, because right in the middle of the lake is Queenstown, the adventure sports capital of New Zealand. But more on that later. First, we want to arrive at the lake! We spent our first night here, at the southern foot of the lake:

A freedom camping site right on the beautiful Lake Wakatipu. What more could you want?

The road runs along the eastern side of the lake, and you always have a view of this wonderful, blue water...

And at some point, after about half of the 80 km length of the lake, you are almost in Queenstown. But only almost: first, you come to a small town called...

++++++++++++  Frankton  +++++++++++

In Frankton (and also in Queenstown), you can see the alpine building style. You can see many houses made of wood or stone or a mixture of both:

...and right behind the houses, you can always see the amazing lake or the mountains of the Southern Alps!

View from the shoreline of Frankton to Lake Wakatipu: The first fun sports enthusiasts we encountered were these two paragliders who seemed to be practicing their takeoff at this spot. The wind was coming from the front and actually lifted them off the ground just like that.

And right behind Frankton lies the very touristy town of Queenstown, known for its numerous adventure sports.

+++++++   Beautiful Queenstown   +++++++

Queenstown has a population of about 18,000 and a hundred times more visitors, so 1.8 million visitors per year! This makes Queenstown a very vibrant city and the streets are a rather heavy traffic experience.

The city itself is quite charming and, of course, located right on Lake Wakatipu. Anette liked it here so much that she would call Queenstown the prettiest city in New Zealand!

Downtown...

We also found the solid building style here refreshing:

In a café, we treated ourselves to breakfast. We were given table number 13 and a chocolate in a cup from 'Vudu'. Was that a bad omen? The food was delicious, though :)

The café was right on the waterfront, where Lake Wakapitu showed us its most beautiful side on this sunny day:

Someone had fun running on the lake....

...and off again.

Over and over again, hehe.

Until the owner wanted to go home. Too bad.

But at this point, we could have someone take a photo of us tourists ;)

Further down the beach, you come to a park, the Queenstown Gardens.

This park runs along the lake, where we can see the next fun sport: kayaking (which is generally one of the main activities here).

The paths in the park also lead through a forested area:

...and back to a park where these impressive trees tower:

And because we like Queenstown so much and it has so much to offer, we will stay here for a few more weeks!

...We have been here for two weeks already (we have never spent so long in one place in New Zealand). And because we have so much to show you, we will divide the photos into several blog posts.

So that's it for today :)

Sending sunny greetings! (Yes, the tan is finally coming back...)

More to come soon!

HanNZette