Queenstown parties and the beauty of Milford Sound!

Hello Hello!

Well, last time I left off I was headed to Wanaka where I spent one very chill night with good friends. First off we settled in to the hostel and then off to the best burger joint in town! (too bad I can't remember the name of it!) Honestly though, this was the best burger that I have ever had....in my entire life....and lives to come! (that includes having tasted a reknowned fergburger!) Gourmet burger patty, garlic aoili, bbq sauce, ANOTHER sauce (gotta love the sauce!), tomato, lettuce, onion, pineapple, shredded edam cheese, and an enormous bun (are you drooling yet??) After we had filled our tummies and were completely satisfied, we waddled across the street to experience the most fantastic idea for a cinema that I have ever encountered: it was a small theatre, filled with COUCHES and all kinds of easy chairs and then halfway through the movie we paused for an intermission and went to grab some fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and a hot chocolate, or a latte, etc...and then settled back into our comfy seats to enjoy the last half of the show. In my opinion, the world should be filled with these places!! :P We saw The Fighter (a must-see show, by the way! Fantastic acting....and that's coming from a person who cringes when she has to watch a boxing movie!). I left the theatre jogging and giving a jab, jab, right hook combo all the way back to the hostel (and you KNOW that I did! haha)

Our next stop was Queenstown. I would describe Queenstown as a magical place. Very touristy, but so much so that it is just accepted. It is rumoured that you would have to spend a year here and $70,000 before you could complete every activity that Queenstown has to offer! Obviously, I have neither that time, nor the money, so I am being very low-budget and just enjoying the spectacular (and cheap) views that this Whistler-esque village has to offer! The town itself is surrounded by towering mountains named The Remarkables (they really weren't very imaginative with the names in NZ, but at the same time, this makes their naming system unique and quite adorable :) On the other hand, you can't say that these mountains AREN'T remarkable! Their craggy peaks snake their way up to the sky and change their colours as the day wears on. There is a gigantic lake situated right at the base of Queenstown, as well as parks, mountains, and a gondola which climbs to the top of the nearest mountain and....of course....boasts a bungy which plummets you through the air right over the heart of Queenstown (is this place great, or what??) It's a haven for the adrenaline junkie, a romantic getaway for honeymoooners, and a sanctuary for the worn-out Kiwi Experience buser, such as myself. Queenstown has it all.

I went out on the town here for the first two nights....no matter that they were monday and tuesday nights and that we only visited two bars in all! But that's the way this place works: every night is a Friday, and the crowd is full of cheap backpackers dancing and drinking til the wee hours (those hours being 130 am for myself, lol!) The hostel bar at Base named Altitude has a karaoke night on mondays...and you know that I can't resist a good karaoke night! The girls and myself did a great rendition of "Man, I feel like a woman!" (complete with Rich, our resident outgoing guy, doing a short stripp-tease on stage....just the top, just the top ;) ). Then I selected Bon Jovi's "Bed of Roses" to sing solo, and immediately began to question my choice. I'd sang it well before when in Vancouver, but the crowd here was much bigger, much rowdier, and much more....well, critical. But after hearing a few slow love ballads sung (and sung not too badly either), I decided to just go for it.....and drank a little more, haha! So then I was called to the stage, the music started (I could hardly hear it, or myself!) and I looked out into the crowd and saw the face of everyone of my buses around NZ, from the first bus to my current one (as everyone tends to meet up in Queenstown). They were all cheering me on and it gave me the courage to sing my heart out, act out every emotion, and dramatically air guitar my way to a free night at the hostel as a prize! The whole crowd was singing and air guitaring along with me. I tell you, that kind of rush is up there with skydiving and delicious burgers! :P After that amazing feeling we continued on to World Bar and enjoyed teapots of alcohol (Russian Roulette is my absolute fav: vodka, kahlua, triple sec, and coca cola!).

Yesterday I ventured out to Milford Sound on a bus tour. This place is a World Heritage Site and is on the nominee list for the 8th wonder of the world. The Sound was covered in ice by a huge glacier 20,000 ago. The ice carved through the mountains towards the Tasman sea, and then left enormous sheer cliff faces as it melted and created the water at the moutain base. The Milford Sound should technically be named the Milford Fjord as it was created by a glacier, and a 'sound' is created by a river which erodes away the surrounding mountains. At any rate, this place is one of beauty, serenity, and grandeur as the mountain faces drop thousands of feet to the water below. We were greeted by downpour rain for the bus ride in, but soon realized that this made the day more dynamic as the small ribbons of waterfalls appeared on the mountains surrounding us....like veins for these mammoth beasts of rock! Once we hit the Sound, we stepped onto boat for a hot lunch buffet, and the rains immediately cleared up and Mr. Sun paid us a visit! Perfect weather! The boat brought us directly underneath the waterfalls, we cruised beside some seals sunning on a rock, and we gazed stupidly at the sheer size of everything around us (there's nothing else that you could really do!) Several times I put away my camera, telling myself that there is no way to capture this on film, and everytime I had to bring it back out again, just in case THIS was THE SHOT of the day!! Such a fantastic experience and I recommend it to anyone travelling through NZ.

Only two more nights in Queenstown....time to enjoy the sunshine! :D