Queenstown - Arrival and the Gondola

NOTE: I was originally going to all of Queenstown on a single post, but there is just too much info and photos to display I will break it up into a few posts…

On the 5th of March, we left Wanaka and drove to Queenstown. Again the day was very overcast, but there were some impressive views from some lookouts along the way.

Arrowtown

On the way to Queenstown, there is a small old style town called Arrowtown. We stopped there to see what it was all about. Basically it has one main street that has lots of shop facades done up like it was the 1800’s gold rush times. Of course inside each shop are people who want to sell you overpriced souvenirs. There were some original huts from that era from the Chinese settlers which was rather interesting to see. As you can see from the photo the Chinese were even smaller back then too! :)

The boots

After arriving at Queenstown, since we had cabins/lodges for all of Wanaka and most of Fox Glacier we agreed we should go back into the tent. We set up at the closest holiday park to the town and then with only 2 hours left in the day we hit the town to look for my new hiking boots.

There are quite a few large sporting shops in town and I was hopeful of finding something. But yet again, not a single shop had a size 14 boot, let alone a wide size 14 boot. I started to get annoyed again, then we walked into a shop called Shoe Clinic. The owner was a Maori who was tall and had size 14 feet as well. As I told him my story about the boots, he definitely was able to relate to it. He said he could get some boots from Auckland but it would take 4 days to get there as it was over the weekend.

I first needed to do some research on the net to determine for sure which boots I wanted. So after checking out the net and finding out that it is almost only Lowa that make a wide size 14 boot that I would like, I went back the shop the following morning and placed the order. The only thing left to do was to wait for the boots to arrive. This gave us a few days to spend in Queenstown. Hmm what to do.. what to do…

Queenstown Gondola

Right near the camp site is the base for the Queenstown Gondola, so after placing the order for the boots, we saw it was a glorious day so we went up the Gondola. The views were absolutely incredible! We spent a bit of time up there looking around, walking up higher, just relaxing and watching some para-sailers take off.