I fell in love...

with Queenstown…and the South Island in general. What a beautiful place! Why am I in love? Let me tell you about this place. The city is lined all along Lake Wanaka and is nestled right up against the pine covered mountains. There are tons of shops and restaurants that line the little narrow streets. It is a tourist town, no doubt, but it's a different touristy feel than other tourist destinations. It is very quaint and picturesque. Everyone is cool and laid back. There are backpackers and outdoorsy people all over. Eveyone and everything is so outdoorsy and active, I love it. My group stayed there for 5 nights. We stayed at a Base X hostel. There were two rooms, each with 8 girls in them. My bed was filled with hair that was not mine, I made sure to wear flip flops in the shower, and our room smelled like urine, but hey, we were in the South Island ready for 10 days of nothing but fun! Plus, we were hardly in our rooms except at night. So let me tell you a little about Queenstown, first. Queenstown is the high adventure capital of NZ. The girls and I made sure to take advantage of this as much as we could. Here are some of the fun, exciting things we did:

Day 1: Shotover Jet

This thing is basically like a giant sea-doo. It was incredible how fast it could go in the narrow river canyons and shallow waters. It could turn on a dime too. It was so scary when the driver would do a 360 degree turn in the narrow canyons; I thought for sure we would hit the canyon walls.

Day 2: Gardens and Puzzling World

Okay, so I didn’t go skydiving, but 8 of our girls did. I went back and forth trying to decide if I should do it with them, but I decided that since I’ve already done it and with the ridiculous prices over here, I would spend my money elsewhere. So while half of the group was jumping out of planes, the rest of us took a beautifully scenic (but chilly!) walk through the Queenstown gardens. When we were all together again, we drove up to Puzzling World. This place was pretty cool. There was a pretty intense outdoor maze you could do (it took my group about 30 mins to go through it), a room full of really cool optical illusions, and a room full of puzzles to do (the kind that take thought process and strategy to solve/figure out). This was our first night having Fergburger! Fergburger is an amazing burger place that was just down the street from our hostel. If you go to Queenstown, you have to have a Fergburger. These things are huge and so onolicious (ono=really really good)! They’re so big that every time I went there (yes, there were multiple Ferg’s eaten) I shared one with one of the girls.

What?!

My first Fergburger. Yum!

Day 3: Kawarau Bridge and Luge

If everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you jump too? Answer: Heck yes! I willingly threw myself off a 43 meter (about 141 feet) bridge. It was amazing, and all 16 of us girls did it (I’m really proud of all of us)! It was cool to do my first bungee jump there because that was the location of the first commercial bungee jump; it was done by AJ Hackett and his buddy. Our group was the first group of the day. I was the 5^th person in our group to go, and I was freaking out! Ha ha they had to count down to one twice because I froze the first time…but hey, that’s a little understandable right?! But I jumped the second time they counted down, and what a rush! The Kawarau Bridge is over a gorgeous river, and when I jumped I got dunked in the water (I actually requested to be dunked). So fun! This was definitely the highlight of the whole trip for me. It was one of the most thrilling things I have ever done! After coming down a bit from our adrenaline high, we did the luge ride just up the mountain right by our hostel. The Luge is similar to the Alpine Slide in Park City, but so much more fun! Just trust me on that.

Watch me jump! I get dunked in the water!

All 16 of us bungee jumped!
So excited we did it!Ready to luge!