The first two days we had in Queenstown were pretty laid back compared to what we would get ourselves into when we returned later.  We spent those two days walking around and getting to know the town and it’s layout and taking the ski lift to the top of the mountain for some amazing views of the city and do a little hiking.  We would return to this town wth a vengeance a few days later, but first we had to go see another amazing part of New Zealand: Milford Sound

Milford sound is actually a fiord, if that sort of thing interests you.  It’s also home to the highest sea cliff in the world coming in at 1692 meters. To get here we drove through some amazing scenery, culminating in a tunnel through the largest stonecliff wall I’ve ever seen.  Our new driver, Lego, asked if anyone watched Game of Thrones.  All the cool people said yes and a few very uncool people said they didn’t and were summarilly banished to the north.  Then, over the speakers of the bus came the theme  song of GoT and the bus went apeshi….sorry I mean everyone cheered wildly.  We were indeed about to drive through The Wall.

We arrived at the fiord and got on a boat with a bunch of other tourists and began our two hour tour.  The first thing you notice is all of the waterfalls.  They’re everywhere, from small streams of water to huge gushing  falls.  On more than one occasion, the boat would pull up so close to the falls, anyone standing in the front got soaked.  We also saw some dolphins!  It was all very cool and, once again in New Zealand, unlike anything we’ve seen.

I have to talk about the place we stayed for the night, Gunn’s Camp.  This was the most extreme example of “off the beaten track” we would see on the trip. There were sand flies everywhere. We shared a little shack with a crazy woman and her two kids (don’t worry I’ll explain) Lego busted out a guitar and I got to play for the first time in years, and everyone else seemed to be playing card games or doing puzzles.  And the 6pm rolled around and the generator got turned off so we all went back to our shacks and lit a fire, both for light and for heating the room.  And that’s when we met crazy.

She brought her kids on this trip – ages 8 and 11 – knowing full well that it was going to be filled with mostly young 20 somethings.  They had absolutely no one to talk to, so I took another pull off my beer and asked them some questions and they didn’t stop talking until we went to bed. And that’s how I found out they have never in their lives been to school because “It’s too structured for them” You’ll hear more about crazy and her kids, trust me.

We got up the next day and headed to Stewart Island.  If we knew then what we know now, we’d honestly have skipped it.  I’m sure it’s nice during their summer, but during the winter when we were there it was a rainy, windy, cold, dreary place with not much to do.  And the ferry ride out there was insanely expensive.  We should have stayed back in town with all the other folks who opted not to go.

Stewart Island

When we arrived, the owner of the place checked in crazy and her kids first.  “I’m only going to charge you for two people instead of three” she said, proudly to crazy and she got absolutely nothing in return.  No Thank you.  Not even a polite nod.  It was awkwardly silent and the owner shot a look at Lego, who looked back  with a Oh you don’t know the half of it look. “I thought that was a pretty good deal”, now staring daggers at crazy. That finally got a meek “thanks”.

That night we wanted to watch Lord of the Rings, which was in the dvd collection in the main room.  Let’s see if we can find some scenery in the movie now that we’ve been here!  The owner comes storming over and says “Nope!  We’re not watching Lord of the Rings again!”  She took the dvd out of the dvd player!  And she put in a documentary about Stewart Island, the place upon which we were standing.  I thought for a second of asking her what you might be wondering now and that is “If you don’t want people to watch Lord of the Rings, Why Is It In Your DVD Collection?!” (She had all three by the way)  We muted the tv and played cards.

We got to walk around the next day, in the rain but got bored quickly so we just found a pub to wait for the ferry back.  We were soon back on the bus heading back to Queenstown, this time for four nights. It’s the longest stop of the trip and I can see why.  When people ask what our favorite part of New Zealand was, we say Queenstown.  We even met a guy who had spent years in New Zealand and had never been and we did that thing dogs do with their head where they turn it sideways when they can’t figure out what they’re looking at or what they’re hearing.  “You serious, Clark?”

Great food, a cute little lake, small enough to walk around and not need a taxi and then of course…..the nightlife.  One of the reasons we were excited about returning here is we would be meeting backup with our new friends from England, Sam and Jamie.  They  had hopped off a few stops prior to hang out with a freind of theirs who lives in New Zealand.  And now I get to tell you about a bar called Cowboys.  Take every single stereotype you’ve heard about Texas and put it in a bar on the other side of the planet and call it Cowboys.  You might be asking yourself, ‘But did it have a mechanical bull?’.  Oh yes.  Yes it did very much.  ‘What about little cowboy hats for you to wear?’  Check. ‘Huge beers?!’  Gigantic draft beers that were actually pretty cheap.  The place would get packed nut to butt and we ended up here every night and had our own little corner where we would sit and play our now infamous drinking game.

I’m pretty sure Jamie started it, but we all soon joined in.  He would yell “Cheers!” And we all had to click our gigantic beers together and say cheers and take a drink.  It didn’t matter when or where.  You could be in the middle of a sentance and someone would yell “Cheers!” Oh Christ…another drink.  And on and on it went.  We would drag people here that were also on our bus and we always had a great time.  I even got on the bull and managed to last all of 2 seconds.

Queenstown also has a famous burger place called…I swear I am not making this up…It’s called Fur Burger.  We stumbled over to this place after a night at Cowboys and waited for 45 minutes for a burger and it was pretty good…but we were staying at a Nomads that had another burger place next door to it and it was just as good, if not better and you didn’t have to wait an hour .

We also got to meet one of our favorite Youtubers while here, Christianne.  She makes travel how-to videos and we had watched a bunch of them prior to leaving, so we had to introduce ourselves and say thanks for the tips for Central America. You can take a look at her channel here.

Ok, one more (shorter, I promise) post about New Zealand and we’ll move on to Australia.