Queenstown

20090924SW7667
Originally uploaded by s webster
Ok so it’s colder the further south I go, it got down to -1 the first night. Anyway it’s been great down here; the town reminds me a lot of a very small Banff. The first day I went up the Gondola to have a look at the town they also have a luge that you can ride while you are up there. I thought it would be good fun but when I got to the top they closed it, as it was too windy. So I went for a short 1 hour hike and took some photos, there is a 5 hour walk that takes you to some old ghost towns though without any cold weather cloths I decided against it. I came back down to town it was around supper time so I headed back to the hostel to dump my bag, well I had some old Americans in my room that liked to talk, talk they did for 4 hours eventually I got away and headed to the burger shop called Fergburger. Everyone kept talking about this place. The burger was ok I didn’t think it was all that special I think my bun was even burnt!

The next day I relaxed and wandered the town. Saturday I was up with the birds as my tour to Milford Sound left at 7am. We stopped at a few places along the way to take some pictures of the fiord as we got higher up the mountains, you could see where the avalanches had covered the road. It has been closed 25 days this winter due to snow; normally it’s only about 10. At the highest point you go thru a tunnel that was carved out thru the mountain by hand and took several years to complete. We arrived at Milford around 1pm. At which point we boarded our ship for the cruse. The ship took us out into the fiord all the way to the ocean stopping at the 2 permanent waterfalls with the largest being over 50 stories tall even though it is dwarfed by the mountains. It is a really picturesque spot well worth the visit. We also got to see some New Zealand fur seals sunning themselves on the rocks; they are really small about the size of a standard dog. The After our cruse we hopped back on the bus for the long haul back to Queenstown (I slept most of the way). I went back to Fergberger and got me a Lamb burger it was actually really good much better than the one I had the other day. I did get fries with it I think there was about half a kg of them almost too much with the burger that is the size of a plate.

Sunday I got to spend the afternoon with Mike Langford, a world renowned landscape photographer. We drove up to Paradise, about an hour north of Queenstown and spent some time talking about exposure, framing and also taking pictures. The spot we went to was where they filmed numerous movies: Lord of the Rings, Wolverine: Origins, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian & numerous commercials. You can really see why they pick this spot over and over again. It was a great afternoon and my pictures now should have some of Mike’s touch in them.

Monday was a day of relaxing and then onto the bus for a 7 hour trip to Christchurch thru some great country.