South Island Trip - Day 2 - On the way to Queenstown

Home is behind, the wooooorld ahead…

My plan was to set off early in the morning and drive all the way to Queenstown, so that we can spend most of the day there. Well, the reality was different.

 

We spent most of the day just driving there. Not that I made a mistake calculating the distance. I just overlooked the necessity of stopping about 20 times before we get there. But we just had to! Here are the main reasons why:

Stop no.1: "I am tired… I really need a coffee…"

Stop no.2.: "Hm, that's a really big dam... let's stop here for a small picnic."
Stop no.3: "Look at those hills, it looks exactly like in the Lord of the Rings. I need to take a picture."
Stop no.4: "I need to go to the bathroom."
Stop no.5: "Wow, that’s an awesome orchard… it looks nice… and a shop, let’s buy some fruit!" (Only after a little bit of post-trip research we found out, that we accidentally stopped at one of the most famous fruit orchards in New Zealand - Jackson Orchard.)
Stop no. 6.: "Cheese factory! Let’s have some cheese and wine!"

"Stop no. 7-20: "What a nice place! And a lookout!"

And here you have some pictures so that you can imagine, why we kept stopping all the time.
 

 

 

 

 

 

When we finally arrived to Queenstown, we had about two hours to have a look around before setting off to our hotel in Wanaka. We decided to use Skyline Gondola and have two rides with Luge (Marek made a nice GoPro video during the ride -> check it out here). The town had a nice atmosphere, though obviously packed with tourists. We both agreed that if we are ever going back to New Zealand, we should spend more time in Queenstown.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, that's us... it was windy.