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Little old Queenstown has come along way in a couple of decades, and it is now a model of the commercial tourism machine. It relies almost solely on the backpackers who want to do the adrenaline junky activities. Some say it is the adventure capital of NZ and the South Hemisphere, and some even go as far as saying it is the adventure capital of the world. That is probably taking a little too far though. With such a title, people are trying to think of every activity possible to cater for the tourists who visit Queenstown. Out of all the activities, it is most famous for the Bungee jumping. AJ Hacket made the phenomenon possible.... how I wish I thought of his idea, even if he did get arrested for doing the activity off the Eiffel Tower to aid the publicity for the Bungee. Bungee jumping doesn't entertain me that much though, as I think I would rather visit more places in the world, than take a free fall off a bridge that is over within a minute. 8 Seconds free fall I think the Nevis Jump is. Out of the People I know who did it, some say it was brilliant (but over in such a short time), and some say it was too scary to actually enjoy it. A lot seem to prefer sky diving, even though the Bungee is apparently 100 times more terrifying.
The picture was taken from when I went up the 'big hill' in Queenstown. It took about an hour to walk up, or five minutes in the Gondola. I walked up the hill more than once, as it was good exercise, and I stopped off in the cafe at the top that prides itself on 'the Worlds best cafe with a view'. From the top, you could get a picture of the snow on the mountains, and this was apparently the first bit of the snow the mountains had seen for the year. The town was still quiet, but we were told it would get busier soon, as the start of the Ski season was imminent.
There was a lot of cheap drink offers in Queenstown which some seemed to take considerable advantage of. It did feel like fresher's week though with a lot of gap year students making me look old staggering around the street at 3am. I can't say I really came travelling to see them posh snobby kids who are missing riding there ponies at home getting drunk at 4 in the morning. I did meet some good people to be fair on this leg of the trip, and one in particular was a 31 year old lad who didn't quite know how use a washing machine. He seemed to think sticking a bag of washing power in the machine and closing the door would work, without even opening the bag of powder. The hostel we stayed in, Nomads, was pretty decent, but the tannoy in the hostel felt like you was in terminal 3 at Heathrow airport.
Queenstown was all about just meeting up with people I met all around NZ for the past fortnight really, and had a good time catching up with them all. I almost forgot to mention about the famous Ferg Burgers. I had to join the craze and have one as that's all anyone seemed to bang on about when the word food was mentioned. It was nice, but I wasn't expecting much as I'm no burger expert. The Tropical Swine was the name of the Burger I had, how apt.
I visited Milford Sound during my time in Queenstown, but I wrote a slightly more detailed blog on that visit.
Just one final thing......Don't you just all love my over opinionated blogs?
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