Stray Day 4 & 5 – Queenstown

After a lunch stop in Wanaka and dropping some people off, we headed onto Queenstown. Home of the bungy. Basically in Queenstown you spend all day throwing yourself out of/off of things and all night partying in backpacker bars. Hmm. Wanaka was pretty, and after a wander trying to find some place in the book (the books, no matter how new they are, are out-of-date – places close, people move on) we settled on a nice cafe facing the water. You know how you all want fat and grease and carbs when you're hungover? I crave fruit. Fruit fruit fruit. Pineapple is a particularly good cure. So I had a divine fruit plate – yoghurt, plum, apple, blueberries, pineapple and the piece de resistance, some grilled banana. YUM. Wanaka (not just for the fruit plate) is somewhere I think I'd like to visit properly. They apparently have an awesome cinema, with sofas and beer and cake. Sounds cool.

We stopped on the way into Queenstown at the world's first commercial bungy site, where we watched a bungy video. This made me actually think I was going to throw up. Whatever extremely remote chance people had of convincing me to give it a go disappeared here – though the bungy from the centre of the Eiffel Tower was kind of funny. (I'm sure it's on Youtube). Lisa and Olivia took on the might of the bridge, fair play to them but Not. For. Me.

On into town (Lisa sopping wet, god bless her) and into Nomads, our hostel for the next couple of days. It's brand new, it's really nice but it is a party hostel. Maybe most of the Queenstown hostels are like that, I heard Base is an absolute kip, with push button showers like a public swimming pool – grim. Cougar had arranged ten dollar pizza in the Thirsty Ram but since I don't really like pizza and wanted something nice I went to Wai instead. It was maybe a touch too posh for me on my own in my pseudobackpacker persona, but hey, let's give it a go. I had monkfish wrapped in parma ham, with some pork belly and scallops, and a beautful view across the lake. Ok, it was expensive, but it was really really nice (though again like Christchurch the monkfish was perhaps a tad overcooked – the pork belly was divine though, just a small piece as pork belly can be overwhelming). I went up to the Ram to meet the others but it was loud and techno and I wasn't in the mood so off to bed early.

Good thing too as Nomads is one of those crappy music playing hostels – the speaker was right outside our door and started at 930. WTF? I assume it is in part to encourage folk to make their 10am checkout but OMG annoying. Since the bar next door had been going til uite late I was less than pleased by this turn of events. Oh well, up and out – we had en-suite facilities (the sinks are ridiculously small in these, with a glass shelf overhead making washing your face an adventure sport in itself) so a leisurely shower and out to explore the town.

Which took about ten minutes, Queenstown is a tourist town. It has tourist activities, tourist restaurants and many shops. So, shopping then. I ended up dropping a fortune in Canterbury, they had some nice ¾ lengths trackies, as I went to pay I spotted a zippy non-hooded hoodie (sweatshirt sounds so 80s) and I tried on an Ugly shirt (I believe they make these out of the scraps of the actual team colours) which didn't fit. The man in the shop them opened up his new delivery to find my size so of course I had to get one then... I love it but oh my god the total expenditure was way too much. I then went for a lake cruise, which was nice but well, a lake cruise is a lake cruise. Queenstown views are beautiful but the whole place is so artificial, so touristy, that it detracts from the Remarkable views (the main range here is called the Remarkables) for me.

We had arranged to meet up for Fergburger dinner. Fergburger is a Queenstown legend but I have to say it's no Jo'Burger. Nice, but I have had better/cooler/bigger burgers back home. Still it is cheap and good and filling. Sitting outside in the blazing sun didn't help I guess. Back to the hostel to get changed and have a few drinks before hitting the night life. I am sure there are many many bars here but everyone ends up in World Bar. if you want to party hard and drink cocktails from teapots and dance to crappy house music in a meatmarket, great. It's not really for me.