January 3rd, 2006 - Adventure Capital of the World

Queenstown is known as the adventure capital of the world, and being here you can easily see why. They have a whole street allocated to adventure rafting, luging, sledging, jetboating, skydiving, off-roading, bungy jumping, canyon swinging, fly-by-wire, hang gliding, paragliding and tons more. We decided that since we missed out on sky diving in Taupo we were set on going hang gliding in Queenstown. Unfortunately, the weather was equally un-cooperative and we had to cancel our booking once again due to rain and wind! We spent the morning driving out to Lothlorian and Isengard - Glenorchy and then back into town only to find that it was still raining...:( We popped in a movie and by the time it was finished it was clearing up slightly, but not enough for skydiving, so we decided to go luging instead. The luge is a three wheeled cart that goes down the mountainside and controls like a GT snowracer. It's actually much tamer than it sounds, but it was still pretty fast considering and on several occasions Laure and I were forced to put a foot down to avoid falling off in our competitive race to the bottom. The city itself is in the heart of the mountains on a lake front, snow covered peaks everywhere. It has to be one of the nicest towns we've visited so far. Next stop, Milford Sound and Te Anau.