Queenstown!

This past weekend our Arcadia group met up and spent an awesome weekend in Queenstown. Although it's located about 3-4 hours away, we had the 'oldest bus in the fleet,' said the bus driver, so it took five and a half hours. We flew up hills, somewhere between 2-6 mph, and we stalled many times. But eventually we got there, and it's an awesome place.

Since it took longer than planned to get there on Friday, we had to rush to a nearby river for our jet boat ride. These things can run in as little as 10 cm of water, and can maneuver like crazy. Our driver flew down the river, narrowly missing huge rock walls and logs in the water. He spun a few 360's, too - it was a ton of fun.

That night we went to the famous Fergberger for dinner. The line is normally over an hour long, but we got there early enough to get our food within fifteen minutes or so. They had a great selection of beef, venison, chicken, lamb, falafel, and veggie burgers. They also had awesome names - Bun Laden (falafel), Sweet Bambi (venison) - just to name a few. Anyways, they exceeded our expectations, and I even heard phrases like, "best meal so far in NZ.' They were pretty fantastic.

We stayed in a Backpacker (hostel), played some hearts and Settlers, and called it a night pretty early.

We were up early the next morning and took an hour long bus ride to the trailhead of the Routeburn Track, one of the Great Walks in NZ. It ended up being a 28 km (~16 miles) round trip day, topping out at Conical Hill. Okay, pictures:

Beach at Queenstown

Selfy with Maddie, Andrea, and Sherry. Obviously.

Sherry chillin on the edge of the world

 

As you can see, it was pretty incredible. We got pizza with our group, and then a few of us went for a late night dip in the lake.

The next morning we went luge-ing. We took a gondola up to the top of a mountain and drove some engine-less go-kart type things down the course. It was a blast, although I lost in the races pretty badly to Sherry, Josh, and Tyler. On the bright side, I smoked Jay. Here are some pics:

Tyler is a dementor, he sucks the fun out of everything and never smiles

That afternoon, we got Fergberger again, and I took a nap on the beach. Then we met up with the majority of our group who went bungee jumping. As much as we would've liked to jump from a 150 meter bridge, the whole 'buying a car' thing really put a dent in our wallets, and we would rather spend our $250 elsewhere. Sorry, Simple, I know you'll never forgive me for not doing it. Also, I'll be really pleased if you actually read this.



Okay, that's all for now. The next post will include my second week of papers (!!!) and Tim Tam's (we renamed our car) biggest adventure yet, a 1000 km road trip to our most highly anticipated destination of NZ. Yeah, it's that exciting. Thanks for reading; until next time!