Queenstown & Alexandra

After river sledging we continued on to Queenstown. Pulling into town, I was reminded a bit of Whistler, with the wood cabins and funky shops and restaurants. There are two lakes in Queenstown and its surrounded by mountains, needless to say it is very beautiful. We grabbed a Ferg Burger for diner, which was absolutely delicious, but we were a bit shocked to see that this little restaurant sold t-shirts for 45 bucks a pop. We camped out of town that night at a DOC campsite that was really pretty and right on the lake, however it started raining which made Ashley and I very sad.

It was still raining the next morning, so we went into town and booked ourselves into a hostel and enjoyed a day of lounging and watching some of the worst movies I have ever seen. Ashley went down to the lobby to make a call to Nacho, a guy she met in Mexico when she was 15 and by random chance he stopped by our hostel with his friends who needed to use the Internet. Small world! We made plans to go visit them in Alexandra the next day and then went out and purchased a 3 litre box of wine for $20. Back at the backpackers we had a few drinks with our new roomies who were Irish, Scottish and Dutch. We played some games, which included drink while you think (and I fully confirmed that I am unbelievable horrible at that game) and of course king's cup. We hit up a few bars, but spent most of our time at Globe bar, where they were having a crazy hat contest, and of course Ashley was right in there!

We woke up the next day and enjoyed another Ferg Burger, and went for one of our typical naps in the park. I don't quite know why, but people tend to stare at us, as we lie there with our mattresses, blankets and pillows and enjoy a bit of a snooze on the grass. I guess this must be a weird thing to do, because we definitely get a lot of pointing smiling people looking at us!

We headed out to Alexandra, and met up with Nacho and his 4 other Mexican friends at their backpackers, which is just out of town. The cooked us a yummy meal of home-made potato soup, fish and veggies, plus a homemade salsa. For dessert, we had ice cream and lots of it. Because there are 5 of them and they all like different flavours, we had lots of ice cream to chose from. My personal favorite was the cookies and cream, sooo yummy! We went out that night and experienced some of the local flavour on Karaoke night. My personal favorite was the guy wearing short short rugby shorts, who sang almost every song, and left the bar later with a towel wrapped around his waist.

The next morning we went back to Queenstown, and not surprisingly, had another Ferg Burger. I really don't think I can describe how delicious they really are. We had planned on going to Milford Sound, which is suppose to me magnificent, however it was raining, and forcasted to rain the next day, and it was going to be a 9 hour drive there and back. Although I may regret it, we made the decision to head out to the east coast to Duneiden, and stopped off for one more night in Alexandra before we left.