Queenstown

 Queenstown has been my favorite to date. I wish we had a couple of weeks here. If I make it back here, Queenstown will be one of the reasons.

It is kinda a juxtaposition of winter and spring here. All around snowboarders and skiers are getting onto buses and heading to the slopes, while trees are in bloom and flowers are starting to come out. The slopes are as close as our park city house was, but the valley is in a cool spring weather.

Walking was a festival of colors

I saw this happening and thought how fun that looked

We went up the gondola ride. It is the steepest in the Southern Hemisphere 

We got some great shots of the town and lake as we up

Tiny is the one of the guys who came on this adventure

Here the gondolas are coming in at the top

I hopped out first to get this picture

They had a good size Jelly Belly area and these are wall hanging are made from Jelly Belly’s 

Frodo and the one ring

We strolled out to the lookout and snapped this picture. Dale had thought of going skiing or bungee jumping, but on this short of notice we could not arrange either 

We did get to the top and noticed this booth

So we thought we would give it a go. They were tandem flights. Each of us had an experienced glider with us

Ben was my partner and I have to say, it was one of my favorite things on the trip so far. I loved it

We had to take the lift up for both the paragliding and the luge runs

I got a couple of pictures

Including this one they took as we drove down the track

Here is where the lift starts and the tracks for the luge stop

After riding the gondola back down, we walking through a bird sanctuary 

It was a pretty walk and the scenery was lush

Had a couple of obstacles in the path, but we just stepped over them and they ignored us

The trees were so spectacular 

We got to see a kiwi, but no photos were allowed as the building they were in was mostly completely dark like nighttime. It took a few minutes for our eyes to adjust enough to even see them. As they are nocturnal ground birds, they are hard to see in the wild. This place helps bred and releases them into the wild as they are endangered birds. They also help rehabilitate hurt birds hopefully to release back into the wild.

We then stopped for a little Asian Fusion. These money pockets were so taste

This sign tells of a bird that is now extinct 

This is a life size sculpture. Tiny is seating on it’s neck. When I stood by it I reached about to the top on it’s back 

This is a statue of a kiwi, though much bigger than life. They ones we saw were about the size of a large rooster or small turkey

Across the lake from ground level

We took a steamer over to a farm/tourist place on the other side of the lake

This was an actual coal steam ship

And we listened to the guy shoveling coal into the fire the whole way over and back

It was a good size ship

But not very environmentally friendly 

The farm was a pretty place

It was really a working farm

And spring was showing it’s colors

They raised several kinds of wool producers 

They land was so green

The steamer as we boarded it to go back to Queens town

The farm in the sun’s afterglow 

Queenstown at night as we were docking.

I loved this place