This is what we knew: We had a flight into Queenstown, New Zealand and 15 days later, we had a flight from Auckland back to Sydney, Australia. Everything in between was up in the air.
We took a 3 hour Jetstar flight to Queenstown, which is on the south island of New Zealand. Flying in, we were in awe of the scenery below.
We took a shuttle from the airport and started to look around for a place to stay for a couple nights. We set up on a computer and began to call around all the hostels in the very compact center of Queenstown. After about a dozen places told me they had no vacancy, we started to worry a little bit. Finally, a place called Lakeside Motel had one room available due to a last minute cancellation.
It was a little pricey for our budget ($150/night) but we were running out of places to call and the view out the window of the room was fantastic
The room was very spacious with a sofa and dining table
You can see all our materials on the table as we were trying to figure out a rough itinerary for New Zealand.
We got some takeaway food and hung out in the comfortable room mapping out our 2 weeks here. The next morning we scrambled to make the 10am checkout (NZ is two hours ahead of east coast Australia so it felt even earlier to us) and headed over to Base Backpackers. Base is a well-run and sprawling hostel in multiple cities in NZ and Australia. After settling in, we went for a walk around the town.
Queenstown also has a beach area.
Notice how nobody is in the water! The air temp was in the 70’s but the water was chilly.
There was all kinds of activities to do on the lake – jet packing and boating to name few. Jet boats are these real fast boats that speed all around the lake. These activities were pretty expensive.
We took a cable car up to a pretty lookout that gave us some great views of all of Queenstown.
In an auditorium we watched a Haka dance. This is a war dance done by the Maori, who are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Most people know the Haka because of New Zealand’s Rugby Team, The All Blacks, perform it before a lot of their matches. Click the link to watch a video of the Haka by the All Blacks.
Both Shannon and I were taken on stage and taught how to do the dance which was really fun.
