Queenstown

Shotover River

Queenstown is where Beth spent most of her weekends when she student taught in New Zealand. It's a tourist town on Lake Wakatipu surrounded by mountains. Here you can do anything that involves the outdoors: jet boat, bungee jump, ski, kayak, etc. We chose a four wheel drive trip on a shelf road down skippers canyon. This was a gold mining area and the canyon is filled with tailings from the water sluices that used to operate here in the 1860's. The road follows the Shotover river for about half its length. It has many beautiful views of the river and other rock formations like the castle and the lighthouse. We stopped at a restored school house and ranch for tea and then return to town. Meanwhile, the others took the Lord of the Rings scenery tour, which covers some of the nearby locations used in the movies.

Lighthouse Rock

In the afternoon, we do laundry, shopping, and a walk through the gardens. Dinner was at a nearby Irish pub, where we had a great stone grilled steak, superb! It was good to have a relatively quiet day after many single nights in different locations.