Zip-lines, Vineyards, and Lord of the Rings

The Fellowship's Adventures: Day 3

Yesterday, I thought I had gotten out of climbing up the Gondola Hill. We booked our zip-lining adventure for today, only to find out that we had to get to the top of the Gondola Hill... The ticket to ride the gondola up is $30 and since we just did that yesterday, we didn't want to pay that again. So...we decided to walk the steep trek up to the top! Although it seemed very daunting at first, we made the climb fun by taking advantage of all the photo opportunities.

 Val climbing up a switchback, like a champ! 

 These carved chairs were all over the hike up

The giant rock behind us was moved here 1000's of years ago by a glacier! 

We had to be up at the top by 10:25 am, we left our hostel at 7:45am, it gave us lot's of time to climb the hill and not feel any pressure about missing our zip-lining time. Once we made it to the top, we even had time to have a little breakfast at the cafe! 

Our "making it to the top" pose! 

Normally there are 10 people in a zip-lining tour, we lucked out and it ended up being just us four! The tour was also an eco-tour, so we learned about some of the environmental issues the area has and what the company is doing to help. One of the biggest problems are the Douglas Fir trees, they were brought over from the America's to make it into an Alpine Forest, with the hope of bringing in more tourists. What ended up happening though, like it does with so many other things, the tree THRIVED in the area! One tree grows 4x faster than it does in the US! Every 10 years the trees double in area, so they spread like wild fire. They grow so fast and high that they make a canopy over the native trees and plants and end up killing them by lack of sun. There are several things that are being done. They burn some areas, but then that also means they kill all the other plants in the area too. Another thing they do is drown the Douglas Fir in canola oil, which kills the tree and the seed. Lastly, they pluck the baby trees from the ground so that they can't spread. It's a timely project, but they are working hard to make the mountains a Douglas Fir free zone. I loved all the environmental education, but the actual zip-lining took the cake! We had six lines, the last one is the world's steepest zip-line, dropping 30 stories!

 All suited up and ready to go! 

Game faces... 

 Hannah all smiley after her first zip-line!  

 Val coming into the tree house after the steepest zip-line

Strike a pose mom! 

The six lines and all the other eco-tour information took us about 3 hours to complete. We had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves so we took a road trip to Arrowtown, which is about a 20 minute drive. On the way there, we passed a lot of wineries, so we thought it was a good idea to go into one and do some wine tasting. The lucky winery to grace our presence was called Gibston Valley Winery.

 Wine tasting! We each had three different types, my favorite was the dessert wine. 

 A dog house made out of wine barrel 

 Cheese tasting at it's finest! We bought some sheep cheese and maasdam cheese. The cheese seller was loving on Val and even asked if she was single, she gently let him down. :)

After wine tasting, we decided to go on a hunt for Lord of the Rings sights. The first one we came across was called Pillars of the King, which was in the end of the first movie (Fellowship of the Ring). In the movie, the Fellowship spent 11 days paddling downstream from Lothlorien, covering a distance of over 300 miles to the breaking of the Fellowship at Amon Hen.

The only way to see the scene from the movie is to kayak down the river, but we had a beautiful view from the top! 

Not too shabby if you ask me! 

After all the exploring, we headed into town to have a little snack. Val heard all about the White Bait Patties from my past blog post: you can read it here . We decided to all give it a try. It wasn't as bad as it looked, my only problem was getting past the eye balls...so I just didn't look at it.

Just look at those excited faces, about to eat whole baby fish... mmm

Before we headed out of town, we had to check out the other LOTR scene in the area. This one is also in the first movie (Fellowship of the Ring). This scene is when the Nazgul charged as Arwen carried Frodo across the river on Asfaloth, her Elven steed. 

Hannah and I may or may not have pretended to be Arwen... we could really sense the power of Elrond... 

Another perfect day in a beautiful country, we keep lucking out in weather! Hannah and I have been so busy working, we haven't really had a chance to explore the Queenstown area, so it's been extra fun having my mom and Val here!  

Comin' Around the Mountain 🎶

The Fellowship's Adventures... Day 2!

We got up bright and early this morning to go explore one of Queenstown's biggest tourist attractions: The Gondola. 

At the top of the hill there is a nice cafe (which includes ice cream), bungi jumping, paragliding, luging, and more hiking trails. We originally were going to hike up this hill, but there was a nice package with the gondola ride and three luging rides, so we opted for that one! Since we didn't get our hike in though, we decided to go on a hike around the mountain. I think it was the better decision, the views were absolutely amazing, and as we hiked, the clouds slowly disappeared so by the end we had blue skies! 

The first part of the hike was through dark, evergreen forests and then suddenly opened up to a view of the surrounding mountains.

Hannah is saving my mom from falling off the side of the mountain... That or she's pushing her... I can't quite tell...

My attempt to get a nice picture of the scenery on the way back...oh! Hey there Hannah! 

Ah! Much better! 

After the hike, we went luging, which was very similar to go karts, but we were just going down hill on a track the whole time. 

We got to take the chair lift to get to the top of the track. 

So much excitement!! 

The view from the top, you can see part of the track on the right hand side of the picture above. 

WOOOOHOOOO!!!!!

Here, you can see almost all of Queenstown. 

We went back to our hostel to eat lunch. My mom, Val and I had a Million Dollar Cruise to catch. I had already been on it, but I liked it so much and I knew they would love it so I went again! To see a detailed description of the cruise, see my post titled " Million Dollar Cruise".

My mom and Val in front of the Remarkables! 

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and reading on the beach. It's safe to say that today was a success!! I can't wait to see what else is in store for us! 

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's my Mom!!

I'm very excited to announce that my mom (Maureen) and her friend Val has made it to NZ!!! They flew into Christchurch a few days ago and explored the west coast before coming down here to Queenstown. They arrived here last night to a welcoming of pooring down rain and having to carry all of their stuff up the hill to the hostel. I attempted to pick them up, but there was a mix up in the drop off point, so they made it to the hostel while I was standing at the bus stop, not as epic of a meet up as I was hoping...

Today was a lot of fun! We started the morning by picking up the rented car and Maureen tried her hand driving on the left side of the road, we didn't even run into one person! I'd say it's safe to say that she's a pro! We walked around town for a little bit, which takes about 20 minutes to show the whole town, so it was a pretty quick tour. In the afternoon we decided to go to Glenorchy, which is a small town about an hours drive away, full of lots of different trails for hiking. The drive there was absolutely beautiful! We were along the lake the whole time, with all these mountains in the background. 

You can see on the right hand side of the photo above, there is a windy road. The entire way there the road was very narrow and curvy, luckily my mom is a professional driver, so we made it through safely! 

Once we got through Glenorchy, we had to take a little gravel road to get to the trail, the whole thing looked like Middle Earth to me, so it was a really fun drive. 

This was the part in the gravel road where we couldn't go any further. A small river was going across, even though we have a pro driver, we just couldn't risk it with a rental car ;). Luckily for us the trail was just around the corner.

It was a beautiful trail, uphill most of the way, but we saw a lot of cool things. 

Like these crazy, yet stunning mushrooms! 

 This little guy hitched a ride on Val's hat for awhile. 

Mom is being a Hobbit and hiding from the Nazgul

 

Hannah being Gollum...

See the resemblence?? 

After only a little goofing around, we made it to the top! 

It was beautiful! It only took us 2.5-3 hours, so it was a perfect afternoon hike! 

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of Val, they are either on my other camera or Val's camera, I'll make sure to exchange some pictures next time to have a more wide variety! But I promise, she was there!!! :) 

I'm sure more adventures are to come! I'll be sure to keep you updated!!