Queenstown 2

POSTED BY SI

Queenstown is a party town. It’s an extreme sports mecca, ‘The Global Adventure Capital’, where the young come to throw themselves off, into and out of stuff; on wheels, ’chutes, skis, boards and elastic. It is the home of the bungy jump. There are older people here, in fact a surprising number of wrinklies and families, but this place is not about them. If we were 20 years younger and here without kids, I think we may have stayed a while.

It’s a really buzzy little town with a lovely vibe, shops like “Shred NZ”, cool bikes, trick cars, Ice Bars, locally sourced fresh food restaurants, and more tattoos than hot dinners. The campsite we were on had the distinct feel of a university campus, though one rammed to bursting point. In the evening the centre has something of apres ski, something of resort clubland.

Every bar and restaurant – there are lots and they’re good – seems to be staffed by euro kids on gap years (to be fair all their homegrown twentysomethings are working in bars in London). Our waiters last night were two English girls, a French girl and a Scottish guy.

It is also, it hardly needs saying, a breathtakingly beautiful place. Originally a gold rush town, set on an impossibly clear blue glacial lake, surrounded by The Remarkables mountain range.

These pics are from The Skyline Gondola, a cable car up to Ben’s Peak, 500m above the town. Above that there’s a a chair lift up to a luge go kart track down to the main building, where the air is thick with paragliders and the screams of bungee jumpers.