Wandering Scotsman

Expecting the hoards of Easter visitors to have started leaving I never bothered booking anything in Queenstown.  I took the Crown Estate road across from Wanaka – very quick indeedly doodle – which is one of the highest public roads in New Zealand.  I wandered what all the fuss was about until I started to descend the switchbacks coming down to the Queenstown area.

Queenstown is mobbed.  All the backpackers were full so I ended up getting the last space in a Top 10 Holiday Park, crushed against the fence by the road, with my car parked outside.  I almost drove 6km down the road to a simple DOC camp site….maybe another day!  Shame as I was hoping to hook up with a few folk here.  I’m sitting typing this in the TV Room where a couple have just finished watching Coro-f*&king-Nation Street!! And now it’s some Strictly Dancing affair!

I’ll be saved tomorrow as Tom and Caroline have got the afternoon away from WWOOFING and will be taking me climbing around town.

So Queenstown?  Initial impressions?  Bring Back Wanaka!  So close, yet so far.  I think I’d like it better here if I was with someone else and could go on the beers, ooooh jeeeez The Proclaimers are the soundtrack on the tele!  Apart from that there’s a lot of shops trying to grab my cash but I walked into, and out of, several outdoors shops without spending any not so hard earned cash.  Not sure what I’ll do around here – paragliding is still pulling at my pursestrings but I’ll see.

I managed to book my flight from Tokyo to Bangkok today for £191 on 10th June so that’s all sorted.  If anyone needs to book cheap flights from Japan for proof of exit, or any other reason I’d highly recommend H.I.T. Travel who have several branches in Tokyo and possibly around Japan (I’m not so used to the place names yet to have sussed that out).  When I changed my flights from NZ I also moved my flight back a day to the UK so if I take it (who am I kidding) I’m back on the 14th of June.  Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttt!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 11:02 pm and is filed under New Zealand, South Island. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.