Queenstown

 We took an 8 day trip to Queenstown the end of January.  Was out first trip to he South Island.  It is a 1 1/2 hour flight from Auckland   Good time to visit during COVID as usually it would be very busy with international tourists but now was very empty.    Queenstown is the most visited city in New Zealand by tourists.  

Auckland Airport

Famous in New Zeeland Ugly Bagels  (heard that Eli's closed!)

Arriving in Queenstown at the airport

We spent five nights in a Juicy campervan.  We enjoyed it.

Campground In Wanaka about 60 miles from Queenstown.  We spent three nights here.

They had a nice pool with a slide and balancing log.  Very cold!

Lake Wanaka

We spent a few hours at Puzzling World

We visited the lavender farm though Dani was not happy with the bees.  She has developed a bee phobia

We went to a salmon farm where you can catch your salmon.  It seemed to be a bad day for fishing.  Many people not catching anything

Here is a Salmon someone caught.  You then buy it for like 7 dollars a pound and they can filet or sushi

On the water front in Queens Town.  This is Lake Wakatipu.  It is New Zealand's longest and third largest.  Also 1,250 feet deep in some places.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wakatipu

In Queenstown we gave up the campervan and stayed in a small family run hotel on the mountain.

The hotel had a pool and hot tub.

We went to the top of Bob's Peak and rode the Luge.  Was a lot of fun and beautiful views.  Dani and I were filming and got video of one kid almost going off the mountain.

This a good blog post about the Luge

https://myqueenstowndiary.com/the-luge-queenstown/

In this video you can see the kid going off the track at 1:35.  We showed it to the family and they were very happy

https://youtu.be/dxJ_1CLFjQU

We took a 1 1/2 hour boat cruise around the lake.  

This is the Remarkable Mountain range which has a ski resort.

This is a shark boat we saw people going it.  It goes under the water.  This video shows what i is all about.  No shark boat for us!

https://youtu.be/tfhkpJbeOlk

This is the famous Kawarau Bridge which is where bungee jumping started.

We ate twice at Fergburger which is a famous burger place in Queenstown where people wait up to 2 hours.  Lucky with no crowds the wait was 15 minutes.  They were good burgers and not expensive for New Zealand as burgers go.

Dani and I played mini golf.  Her second time.

All in all was a good relaxing trip with very little planning