Day Eight - The Extreme Sports Capital of the World

Well it’s goodbye Australia, hello New Zealand! For the first time on this trip, my alarm clock actually woke me up at 4:30 so we could make sure we were packed and ready to catch our uber at 5:45. I have been sounding increasingly frog-like and it took me a good while to get to a manageable breathing situation. Colds suck. I blame the guy sneezing on the way to Texas. Ugh.

We got ready and were packed up and waiting for our uber at 5:45. I had scheduled one ahead of time and he showed up promptly and got us to the airport in plenty of time. We checked in our bags, got through security with no drama, and went to find a place to wait for our plane in the Sydney international waiting area. It was enormous. The duty free area looks like a high end mall, and walking through there was like wading through an invisible cloud of the most expensive perfume you’ve ever heard of (my asthma didn’t appreciate it, thank you very much…).

We got a few more souvenirs at the shops and then found breakfast at a little restaurant. Mom and I both got the avocado toast, which they prepare Mediterranean-style here, with lots of olive oil, feta cheese, and spices. It was good, just very…olive oily.

They didn’t have a gate for us so we just waited. All this fuss to get us here 3 hours early and they didn’t even have a gate assigned until boarding. Weird…

At 8:30 our gate appeared on the board letting us know that our flight was boarding. Right then. So we went directly to our gate and directly onto our plane. We got settled and left a little while after 9 am. It’s a 3 hour flight from Sydney to Queenstown and New Zealand is 2 hours ahead of Sydney, so we took off at 9 am and landed at 2:15.

I could swear we were just on the beach a few days ago…

I knew we might get caught up in bio security because we had been traipsing all over the rainforest and zoos, and I might have also bought some crocodile jerky to bring home for dad…

We went through the line and I got my red card to go and visit with the biosecurity officer, who was very nice. And also definitely tossed Dad’s crocodile jerky. Bummer. Sorry dad. It would have been something silly to try. We got our bags, went through the rest of security and then headed to the rental car counter because guess what, y’all? I’m driving in New Zealand.

I picked up our ride for the next few days and we piled all the bags in to drive to our B&B. I have driven in both Scotland and England so I’m familiar, but it’s always a weird 5 minutes while I remember how to drive on the wrong side of the car AND the wrong side of the road. We got away from the airport without hitting any pedestrians (MUCH harder than it seems…) and we got to The Embassy B&B a few minutes later. It’s situated in a more residential area with an amazing view of the mountains around Queenstown.

We got checked into our very cozy room and quickly hopped back into the car to head downtown. Due to the flight and the time change we hadn’t eaten anything for lunch, so we were very happy to get to our dinner reservation at 5 pm. We parked the car and did a quick look around town.

Queenstown is known as the world’s extreme sports capital, and it is 100% well earned. The entire place has ski town vibes, there are more bike shops in one place than I have ever seen, there’s folks running submersibles in the lake, and there are gangs of kids on mountain bikes doing wheelies down 45 deg incline streets.

This place is insane.

We parked (next to an indoor skydiving place) and after a look around town we headed to the Skyline, an elevated gondola ride up to a lookout above the city with a restaurant with panoramic view of the skyline. We got checked in and got in our gondola to ride to the top of the mountain. The view was gorgeous. There were kids hauling mountain bikes onto the gondolas so that they can ride bikes down the mountain, and then there’s a bungee jumping platform at the top of the mountain. This town can accommodate literally every way you can do something insane/get injured.

We got seated right on time in the Stratosfare restaurant. It’s an all you can eat buffet and the food is amazing. Mom was excited because she could try a little bit of all the different things we’ve been seeing on the menus since we’ve gotten here. We even got to have a small pavlova for dessert. Was hands down the best food we’ve had on the trip, and the view was incredible. We finished dinner and had a quick look from the observation deck before heading back down the mountain.

The pictures are so amazing and the weather is so clear that it doesn’t even look real…

We got back to the B&B and relaxed for the rest of the night. I put on Bondi Rescue so that mom could see the show and where we walked around the beach on our first day in Sydney. The late sunset was throwing us so at 9:45 we rolled down the blackout shades and decided we should try and get to sleep since we have an early morning tomorrow!