New Zealand: Queenstown 7 - 8Feb12

I’m taking The Stray Bus through the South Island. There are loads of bus tours going around New Zealand for backpackers and I decided to take one because you get driven around to some good locations, ones that you would more than likely go to if you were hiring a car to tour the island, and can get on or off depending on where you’d like to stay longer. A friend told me about her tour that she took last month and had a great time. I thought that driving around on my own would be no fun at all, at least this way I get to relax and be driven around with other backpackers and meet some people. I only have seven days to see six places so it’s a seriously whistle stop tour... and the first stop is Queenstown. I heard that these busses were for really young gap year travellers and were just a bunch of kids having a piss up riding around. I chose Stray Bus because the reviews said it was for people who actually wanted to see stuff, more people over 25, and not just have a piss up party.

But when I walked up the stairs into the bus and turned to look at the group for the first time I was faced with a wall of moody, sunburnt, twelve your old German chicks. Okay they weren’t all German, but 90% were moody twelve years old chicks. It felt like I had walked onto the bus for the Sweden vs Germany under 18 blonde ****’es New Zealand hockey tour 2012. Great, the girls I tried to avoid all through high school, and successfully avoided since I left school ten years ago. And why were they all girls?? Had they chopped up all the guys and used them to stuff their bras? I later found that much more girls use these busses than guys, because it’s so safe to travel in NZ and the easiest way to do it requiring minimum effort. Also Germany obviously has a Stray Bus billboard up somewhere, either that or its word of mouth German efficiency style. And they quite literally were all about 18-20. Eish, my heart sank through the floor to China. I was hoping for some groovy, friendly, like minded travellers...this was going to be a hard trip. I honestly don’t think it was just because I was feeling down that this freaked me out, they genuinely weren’t pleasant. No one said a word after a few smiles and hellos, and trying to strike up conversation was like pulling Barbie heads off.

Trying to focus on the positive I set my eyes on the road for Queenstown. It was really nice to get out of Wanaka and have new things to distract me. The driver is called Snowflake is a 23 year old Kiwi guy whose job in winter is to handle snow machines, hence the nickname I guess. He was nice enough, chatting over the loudspeaker trying to get everyone excited about the massive party town Queenstown, ‘the adventure capital of New Zealand, the grownups playground’.

After a few minutes some really loud, tinny chart dance pop blasted through the overhead speakers, and was playing relentlessly unless Snowflake came over the loudspeaker to say something inane. (Although sometimes reluctantly saying something interesting about the area we were driving through.) Absolutely no reading or thinking was possible with this insane tin pounding in my eardrum, and even my headphones - which are made to block out external sound - with my own music playing couldn’t drown out Katy Perry. Okay I know that I had the grumps at this stage, and I am a positive person usually, but this was all a bit too much. Something had to lift my spirits or Grumpy Town was my only destination!

We stopped off at the AJ Hacketts bungy jump just outside Queenstown, and watched a short movie about the guy who started commercial bungy jumping back in the 80’s. He was a nutty Kiwi guy, he watched some ancient tribes practising it somewhere and thought he’d give it a go. He jumped off all kinds of landmarks including the Eifel Tower, and even bungy’d out of a helicopter with a really long chord. Anyway, he pioneered bungy jumping over the world and was the creator of these bungy’s in New Zealand. The one dunked your head in the water at the bottom, and was quite high (not as high as the one I didin SA though, the highest one in the world) but was over a ravine with beautiful turquoise rapids. It was so hot I actually just wanted to climb down the rocks to dive in there! Trying to talk to anyone on my bus was still like sticking hot coals in my eye, so I just left them to it.

We made it to Queenstown which is a really pretty town quite like Wanaka but much bigger, a lake surrounded by mountains, Lake Wakatipu, and is much colder than lake Wanaka. The temperature between summer and winter only fluctuates 2 degrees, and in winter the whole town is in shadow pretty much, bbrrr. But right now it’s hot and amazing and we were all dying to get off the bus.

The Stray Bus guarantees you a bed in a hostel that they endorse so you don’t have to worry about booking anything, and if you want a night there you just put your name down but you can stay elsewhere if you want to. It’s just easier to stay where they take you though so you can dump your bags and get on with things. There were two said German pre-teens in my room, but I got chatting to a nice Dutch lady who was up for having fish and chips on the lake beach with me so we bought a cold bottle of white NZ wine (which is really expensive by the way, the cheapest one is around £6 but you can get cheaper NZ wine in the UK, even though the wine we got was from that exact region, Otago. Not sure why.) I told her about the amazing chips I had and we went to the same place and got a HUGE plate of those yummy chips and a massive battered fish, can’t remember what type it was but one I’ve never heard of. No cod in these parts! The lakeside was full of backpackers and it was still scorching although it was around 7pm by now. The sun here is nuts, it can get very cool in a breeze or in shade, almost nippy, but the sun is like a lazer ready to singe your hairs off when it hits you directly. It must be to do with the ozone layer in these parts.

We lay on the grey pebbles and I watched people attempt to swim but leap out squealing because of the cold. Like Wanaka, the lake was amazingly clean and fresh looking, deep blue grey with those grey pebbles leading in, so inviting on a hot day. I couldn’t resist any longer and took a dip, very cold but the most refreshing thing on the planet.

 I left to go for a walk through the park near the lake, it was all very idealic with a perfectly manicured bowls club, a tennis court, big shady trees and if you walk far enough you come out to the other side and are faced with the beautiful lake and mountains again.

I slowly walked back to the hostel through the twilight park, and as I got closer to the centre again I could see why they called this the party town. Loads of bars and soon to be drunk international travellers milling about. My Dutch friend invited me to join them for a night out on the town, but I just wasn't in the mood. Although if I had been I can imagine it’s a really fun (if not outrageously expensive) night out. It’s a very pretty town, clean and perfectly set out as always in NZ it seems, and lots of cool extreme sports going on, although I did not see one single Kiwi working there in all the bars, coffee shops, hostels were international workers, especially British. Except for the fish and chip guy though, he was Maori which there aren't many of in the South Island.

My night at the hostel wasn't the best. I started feeling dodgy so went to lay down to watch ‘An idiot abroad’ on my laptop, but that didn't last long as I had to do some puking in our dorm’s bathroom. I have a really stupidly sensitive stomach to oil or anything deep fried, so out came the fish and chips although I’d like to add that they were perfectly good and delicious, I just can’t handle oil, silly girl.  The poor Canadian girl who was trying to sleep! Our dorm had a balcony that overlooked the square where all the drunk people in the town gathered to shout at each other, and the room was baking hot so we had to have those doors open. I was staying at a hostel called Base, which is known to be the biggest party hostel around. (Not known by me at the time though, but I learnt.) There were people shouting, drinking, singing, falling and getting off with each other in all the corridors all night. Our door key wouldn’t work properly, so around 3am one German pre-teen chick started rattling the key for about half an hour in the door, with three blokes egging her on. I finally got up to let her in and she squinted at me, rolled her eyes, pushed passed me and passed out on her bed with all her clothes and shoes on. I had to shoo away the three guys vultering around outside and shut the door in their face... not tonight boys! About 4am the next German chick started rattling the door, I decided to leave her but after what felt like an hour I got up to let her in too. Needless to say, not much sleep going on at Base hostel. I was glad to get out of there at 9am to get back on the Stray Bus and go to the next place, Mount Cook.

We stopped off outside Queenstown at a fruit store where I bought some corn in the husk (milie to South Africans) an avocado, some carrots, garlic cloves and a really juicy nectarine all grown in the local area and in season. Yum.

Otago (the state that Wanaka and Queenstown belong to) to me is all big grey blue lakes with clean grey pebbles everywhere there aren’t plants or grass, snow tipped mountains, perfectly maintained wine and fruit farms, turquoise rapids, lots of extreme adventure sports and fresh pure air.  Very lovely.