Queenstown

Wednesday the 8th til Saturday the 11th of January: Driving to Queenstown, Claudia and me stopped at another LOTR film location, the Pillars of the Kings. It's on the Kawarau River, that runs through little canyons. In Queenstown we were a bit lazy. No extreme sports (too expensive), mostly just enjoying the vibe of the town. Queenstown only has about 12000 residents, but it feels like much more, with all the tourists. After being in quieter places for so long, it felt a bit overwhelming, when we first entered the town and got stuck in traffic. But I liked the atmosphere. On Thursday we had to say goodbye to our travel mate Sacha, who's trip was ending soon. Until we left Queenstown on Saturday, we did a short hike up the Tiki Trail to where the gondola is (great view over Queenstown, lake Wakatipu and the mountains) and ate our way through the cafés and restaurants. Fergburger is really great, but very busy. So you should order on the telephone, pick it up and eat it on Perky's Floating Bar. On our last night, I went out and ended up in a pub crawl. Totally not my thing (at least not with a bunch of wasted 20-year-olds), but luckily I got to know some people not just out for getting alcohol poisoning. So I had a great night. On Saturday we left for Te Anau. Unfortunately, the road we wanted to take was closed due to an accident, so we had to do quite a detour. Apparently a lot of people had the same problem and so we needed 2 hours for the first 20km 😑. But hey, it was our first and only real traffic problem we had, so we were lucky. Te Anau greeted us with grey skys and a bit of rain. We crossed our fingers that the weather would improve for our trip to Milford Sound the next day.