Day 17: Queenstown

18 november

Breakfast around 09:00. With two other persons from the group I take the bus of the hotel to take us into Queenstown to drop us off at the cable ride. We take the cable to the viewpoint. You can look very far from up there. The other two guys took a luge kind of thingie, I passed as I wasn't in the mood for it.

Afterwards we went down again and did some shopping. I finally found a decent, not to expensive, backpack. The one I used was ok, but had small bands that cut into my shoulders. The new one is a bit smaller but much easier to carry for long times.

At 13:30 we were picked up for the Safari of the Rings (Yes I know, we were the tourist again, but it was fun and there wasn't that much Tolkien oriented tourism in New Zealand.). Most of the area's used to shoot the movie are near Queenstown. Our chauffeur showed he drove a real 4 WD a few times by going through river at 'unadvisable speed' which was great fun. We also did some gold searching in the river but I don't have the patience for that. Some people found little specs of gold though.

At night we walked around a bit and enjoyed the view.