After nearly two weeks of traversing New Zealand from North to South, we finally reached our last destination – beautiful Queenstown. Queenstown is a resort town on the southwest corner of the South Island that is known for its adventure tourism. This beauty of a town is ideally situated on an inlet called Queenstown Bay on Lake Wakatipu that is further surrounded by majestic mountain ranges.
View of Queenstown from the top of the gondola on a cloudy day.
We arrived at around dusk and only had a few minutes to walk around the downtown area before dark. The town has a very cozy, vacation vibe to it. People were out and about enjoying the night.
I spy a KFC and the Queenstown gondola.
There are a number of restaurants, from casual to upscale. Many featured seafood. We had a fantastic view of Queenstown from one of the seafood restaurants on the dock. We lucked out and got the best table in the house! The day we arrived, we had stopped by the restaurant before the dinner rush and happened to speak to the manager, who told us to request this table. Everyone is so nice here!
View of Queenstown from one of our dinners.
Another lovely New Zealand sunset.
The town itself is small – there is only one stoplight and the widest part is probably about 6 blocks. The town is oddly shaped with two long arms that hug the lake radiating from the downtown area. Another part of the town lies on a peninsula across from downtown. In a town of this size, it is possible to buy whatever you might need, but there is probably only one store of each type.
On another day, we rode up the Queenstown gondola to see the view. Although parts of the gondola are cheesy, the view was worth it, especially now that Deer Park Heights is no longer open to the public.
A typical Skyline gondola.
View of Lake Wakatipu from the top of Queenstown gondola.
When you get to the top, there is a cheesy luge track you can ride. It sounded very exciting to us until we got there and saw that it was mostly kids and grandmas doing the luge. Now that I have a kid, I would definitely take him on this when he gets old enough!
Queenstown gondola luge
Since it was a cloudy and dreary day, we weren’t able to get very clear views. We did find a few interesting hiking trails up at the top of the gondola though. We decided to take a short hike through the forest and it was gorgeous.
We were almost glad it was raining because of all the dry timber! The trees were so tall and thick that even during the day it was dark in the wood. We saw these bright red mushrooms everywhere. I went crazy and took 100 shots of red mushrooms because I had never seen what I term “Super Mario” mushrooms in real life before. Fortunately, I am only plaguing you with one photo.
A real life (possibly poisonous) Super Mario mushroom found in New Zealand.
As we descended back down the gondola, we saw this sheep on the steep hill. The sheep are really everywhere you look in NZ! It’s like they were following us.
Baaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Next: Glenorchy, Milford Sound, and Deer Park Heights.
Travels with Sandy 
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