Queenstown

Aerial View of Queenstown

Queenstown is boringly beautiful.  If you look at the aerial view of the city above, you see mountains, snow, lake, garden (lower peninsula above), golf course (upper peninsula above), boats, restaurants, etc.  Make no mistake about it, this is a tourist town.  It is the so-called "NZ Adventure Capital."  People come here to do things, especially adrenaline activities like bunny jumpy or its cousin, the swing; jet boating; skydiving; whitewater rafting; paragliding, etc.  But you can also do more normal activities like walking, hiking, cruising on the lake, horseback riding, biking, etc.  Most tourists, however, come here to see Milford Sound, perhaps the most popular tourist attraction in New Zealand.
You find all kinds of tourists here, ranging from the lowly backpackers (like me) to the high-end tourists staying at the Hilton.  I was surprised to also find many Asian tourists, mainly from China, Japan and Korea.  Some of the shops even have sales staff speaking those Asian languages.  Many tourists also use Queenstown as a jumping point to other nearby tourist spots like Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, Wanaka, or even to Stewart Island and Dunedin.
In town, you find a lot of bars catering to the young crowd and high-end restaurants with excellent NZ seafood, steak, lamb or venison.  I tried as much NZ native food as possible, especially seafood.  One of my favorite spots, more like a shack, sells all kinds of local seafood.  I happened to walk by there and when I looked at the extensive menu and prices, I was surprised.  One of the drivers, who grew up in Queenstown, later confirmed to me that it has one of the best seafood in town.  Another confirmation is the endless stream of customers stopping to eat there.  It is run by a big gruff Samoan, who uses the quality of his food to do the talking.  Below is a picture of the shack and the fish and chips.  My favorite are the green mussels, which are farmed in Nelson, a town that we passed through on the first day of our travel on South Island.  The mussels are big and costs only NZ$12 (about US$10) for 14.

Aggy's Shack

Green Mussels and Orange Roughy Fish (without chips)

Another specialty seafood for the west coast of the South Island is whitebait.  I forgot to mention this in my earlier posts but I tried this fish when I was at the Franz Josef Glacier village.  It's a very small fish, maybe about an inch long, white in color and usually cooked with a thin omelette patty.  I could not taste the fish itself but at least I can say I ate it.

Waterfront, where all the high-end restaurants are

Shotover Street, main thoroughfare through Queenstown

100-yr old TSS Enslaw, still running on coal

Queenstown Gardens, a beautiful park

Riding the Skyline Gondola

Another View of the Skyline Gondola