Queenstown Trip

This was an exciting weekend. I went to Queenstown with everyone from my Arcadia program- 17 of us now. We got on a bus at 10am on Friday and drove the 3 or so hours inland to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. The first thing we did was to go on a jet boat ride on the Shotover River. That was sweet- they darted us up and down the passable stretch of the river, taking us real close to the cliff faces, rocks, etc. Every so often we'd go into a 360-degree spin. It was a lot of fun. Then we pretty much chilled out the rest of the evening. After we checked into our cabin- 15/17 of us were all in one cabin. It was fairly nice- 4 bedrooms with 4 beds each and then a kitchen and common room. We walked around Queenstown, which is maybe only 15,000 people max, but since it's a resort town there is a lot of cool stuff packed into the small area. I ate dinner at Fergburger- a hamburger shop similar to the velvet burger in Dunedin. Just massive burgers jam packed with glorious ingredients. We went to the grocery store in town and got breakfast and lunch for the next day as well as some general trail food for the hike. Friday night everyone just hung out at the cabin.

Then on Saturday we took the bus to the head of the Routeburn track, one of the Great Tracks of New Zealand. We did the first leg- about a 3 and a half hour hike (around 13 kilometers) up to a hut for backpackers doing the whole track. We ate lunch there and reveled in the amazing view of the valley below us. Then we turned around and headed back. Jane, our program director, does all of these activities with us- for the hike her husband and a family friend came with as well. In talking to this guy, I found out that he did a year on an exchange program in high school in the United States- in Kewanee, Illinois. He said he'd been to Rock Island a few times. Crazy stuff- small world. Anyway, after we'd all had a chance to shower back at the cabin, we went to a nice pizza place. Most of us stuck around for happy hour (this happens to be much later than US happy hours, which I find to be a happy circumstance). I went to another bar with mostly everyone and we hung out there for a while listening to a guy play an acoustic guitar set.

On Sunday we got up and rode the gondola up the mountain right behind our cabin, one of the largest directly overlooking Queenstown. Once on the mountain, we went on the luge- riding little carts down windy paths at high speeds. After that, we headed to Arrowtown, just a few kilometers outside Queenstown. I had lunch at a nice little bakery; I had a good venison pie. Then, for our final event- we went to the Kawarau Bridge Bungee Jump. Not everyone did the jump, but most of us did. It was pretty incredible. The jump was 134 feet- the worlds first bungee jump site. It was pretty terrifying standing on the ledge and then maybe the first second right as I jumped, but directly after that it felt pretty cool- definitely a big rush. They're so accurate on the length of bungee they give you that you can tell them if you want to dunk in the water, touch it, or not touch it. I touched my hands in, which was pretty cool I guess. Afterwards they lower you into a raft and you just climb some stairs back up to where you first walked in. Intense stuff- it was epic.
Then we drove back to Dunedin and I stayed up until 2:30am doing a history paper. Toodles.