Day 6

7th April 2010

After much physical exertion yesterday, we had planned for a slow day today. We shall be journeying from Milford Sound, back out to Te Anau and our final destination will be Queenstown. The weather still held its cherry exterior and it was a pleasure to drive through the countryside under the bright balmy sun. We are pretty much covering our previous tracks, so we didn't bother with the photos.

The road into Queenstown from Frankton was lovely. After many hours sheep / lake gazing, it was quite refreshing to see some stone retaining walls and houses stacked upon the landscape almost haphazardly.

Frankton - Queenstown

Incoming

Repetitive accomodation units nestled among the hills

Entering Queenstown was like stumbling upon civilization after so many days in the 'wilderness'. We have seen our fair share of cars in the congested city of Kuala Lumpur, but upon arriving in QT, it was as if we have never seen so many cars in our entire lives.

Hello civilization!

I have to say, we were a little overwhelmed by the traffic & it was the first time that we felt that the Jucy Chaser is huge & fat. At first glance QT is a pretty little town. It is lovely, clean and very, very young. QT is easy to like, but hard to love. Don't get me wrong, we adore QT but we felt that QT lacks character and it will always be pretty but hard to be beautiful. All the buildings are new & funky but they don't relate to each other, much less to the environment.

More minimalistic repititive accomodation units

So, I suppose it is safe to say that nothing and everything is vernacular around here. Nothing & everything will fit nicely! In saying that though, QT's geographical location and natural landscape is astounding. Facing the spectacular Lake Wakatipu and backed by The Remarkables, it is definately prime location.

a gem of a town

QT is NZ's self-proclaimed Adventure Capital and we wholeheartedly agree. Previously I had just wanted to spend an entire week in QT to carry out all the activities QT provides. After closer investigation, I deduce that QT is a tourist town, run BY the tourists FOR the tourists. Mostly everyone is a tourist there. From the peds walking around the streets, to the bar man, waitress, paraglider, tour guides, skydiver, pilot, street cleaner & shop owner.

There are plenty of 'i-sites' around the town and besides functioning as the normal Information centres, they mainly provide bookings for activities around the town. You don't even need to do price-scouting as every one of them offers the same deal for the same activities. Convenience at its very best.

We booked our activities for the following days, then looked for accomodation for 3 nights. I made the desicion to have Korean for the night because I have a weakness for Korean.

Korean side dishes. We did not take any photos_image courtesy of Google

So, if you were ever in doubt, choose Korean. Because they never fail to disappoint. Sumptous meals, delicate side dishes, and the waitresses are usually petite, fair & lovely to behold. Between the 2 of us, we had a beef + tofu stew, seafood stew, little gyoza dumplings plus the additional side dishes including but not limited to, kimchi, honey wedged potatoes, beansprouts, sesame jelly slice, parsnip salad, mashed potatoes, jellyfish salad, etc.

Yes, it was a night to remember.