Day 11 – Queenstown

We woke up early to clear blue skies which we were really excited about as it meant we were actually able to do Snow Shoeing!! We met the guide at our Park Reception just before 8am where we met the other 2 girls going on the hike with us. We really didn’t know what to expect, so we just had our fingers crossed it was going to be good!

We headed out of the city in the van, which was really nice to have someone else driving for a while, up to The Remarkables Ski area. After driving 10kms up the mountain, having to stop at about the 8km mark to put snow chains on the van we stopped to get ready to head up the mountain. We got all of the gear ready to get started on our trek. At this stage we were still a little bit unsure as to what to expect. We put our warm layers on then, got our equipment which consisted of 2 hiking poles and our snow shoes. Show shoes are best described to be like ski’s but smaller and wider. Pretty much you strap your shoes onto the show shoe and it makes an easier platform to navigate on the ice. As we started to head up the hill, the guide Pete changed the platform on our shoes to make it easier to walk in the deep snow.

I over heated as we were walking up the mountain, so I had to undo my jacket as I was feeling quite unwell. The trek up the mountain was difficult in parts and not so bad in others. It was a great relief when we reached the top. The view at the top over Queenstown was amazing! We climbed approximately 1370ft above sea level and the wind was -15degrees. It was pretty cold!

After a nice hot chocolate and a biscuit, (we now love Cookie Time biscuits) we messed around in the snow and took a few pics.

We then started our trek down the mountain.

You would think that coming down a mountain would be a lot easier than going up, but in reality it is not. It is pretty awful on the joints, in particular the knees and ankles. I had more troubles coming down then I did going up. When we reached the van the place where we parked was getting a lot more busy and people were getting caught in the snow all around us as people were trying to get though without snow chains on.

We were then dropped back into our campervan spot and we had some lunch. Snow Shoeing burns approx 800-1000 calories per hour. Needless to say, after cereal for breakfast, 2 x cookies and 5 hours of snow shoeing we were starving! I realised at this point that I had left my brand new gloves in the back of Pete’s van. I gave him a call to see if he could drop them off on his way back through the town.

Surprisingly we still had a bit of energy left, so we decided to head back into town and take the gondola up to the lookout point in Queenstown. The view from there was really great as you got to see out to The Remarkables, where we had just hiked, and a different view looking out to some of the other surrounding mountains. While we were up the top of Lookout we went Luging. Luging is like Go-Karting but on a easier to control kart. We rode on the 2 different tracks and it was really good fun. At the bottom of the tracks you can take a chair lift back up the hill to ride back down again. They have set it up really well so that the chair lift takes the luge’s back up the hill as well. We hung around up at the lookout for a while and had a snack and some water. When we had had enough up there, we headed back down in the gondola. The ride down in the gondola was scarier then the ride up.

When we were safely back on the ground we went for a walk around the lake and watched a black labrador chasing sticks around. He was very well behaved. We found Cookie Time and got a small pack of cookies each for our snacks on the road. We then went to find somewhere to eat but because it was a public holiday a lot of places were shut or had a 15% surcharge. We found a Irish pub that didn’t have a surcharge, however when we went up to see the menu, we discovered that the only food they did was pizza. So we decided to have a small drink each then went to find somewhere else to eat. We found this really popular burger place which was packed called Fergburger. Apparently it must have been some really big burger place as some Asian people were taking their picture out the front, then after ordering and receiving their burger (1 shared between 4 people) they all took pictures with the burger. Admittedly the burgers were good, but I don’t think good enough to have a picture with it.

After we were full and completely exhausted we went back to the campervan to get ready for the next day.