New Zealand - Southern Alps

Our first destination in the Southern Alps was Queenstown, which is surrounded by mountain ranges with intriguing names like the Pisa Range and the Remarkables. The latter, besides appearing in various (digitally modified) guises in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, also house a ski area, which makes Queenstown NZ's version of an upmarket ski-resort. For the first time since leaving Christchurch (or perhaps Singapore ?) we were in a town that oozed a bit of lifestyle. Which suited us well, given that we felt obliged to be in a proper Irish bar to bring a toast to St Patrick. Queenstown also doubles up as the capital for extreme adventure, with aerial activities such as bungee-jumping and the 'giant swing' on offer or more water-based adventures focused around the Shotover river.

These differing activities bring a good mix of people to the town: on one hand wealthy tourist and kiwi's that are attracted by the resort-style atmosphere (more expensive sport cars here than anywhere else so far in NZ and loads of Japanese), on the other hand lots of proper and young budget travellers looking for the adrenaline kick that extreme adventure brings. The first group mainly housed in expensive hotels, the second mainly in old vans (even ours was beginning to look distinctively modern) or even older station wagons.

We like to think we hovered somewhere in between, further evidenced by our choice of activity. Some (light but fun) adventure in the form of a jet boat (basically a jet-ski behaving like a boat: extremely fast and agile in very shallow water) over the Shotover river and the lake on which Queenstown is perched. JP ended up very wet having sat in one of the wettest seats - we found this out at the end! Combined with wine-tasting (and buying for consumption during the remainder of our time down under) and sightseeing of an old gold miner's village (Arrowtown - which happens to have an interesting Chinese link, for those interested we'll go in detail upon return!). As you can see, a bit of both worlds! And oh yes, we did say 'cheers' to St Patrick, together with a few hundred travellers in a proper Irish pub with proper live (and non-live) Irish music.

From Queenstown it was onwards and upwards (eg further to the North) to Wanaka, a small village on another, equally beautiful lake surrounded by stunning mountains. Here we reverted to what we do very well by now - walking. Up and down a hill, amazing views! The village didn't have too much else to do, so with a take-away pizza we were back at our campsite, preparing for the next day's transfer, that would bring us to the West Coast.

For the people that have been in New Zealand, you may wonder, what about Milford Sound (a massive, 1,200 meter deep fjord) ? Believe us, we have tried to get there, but bad weather conditions three days in a row didn't allow us to get there. So, we figured, a good thing to add onto the 'to do' list for the next time in NZ. Because by now we are both convinced that this will have to be on the cards!