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In Queenstown we traded our rental car for a small motorhome, found a nice “holiday park” near downtown, then went exploring and planned our next day’s activities. The mountains around Q’town, being on the dry side of the range, reminded us of NM and some CO mountains. What we don’t have, though, is the majestic lakes arrayed like fishbones up and down the spine of the south island. It was the beginning of the fall foliage season, which made it especially nice to be there this time of year.

Q-town, Albq; arid mountains set off by splashes of yellow and green, etc. My commentary on the similarities between here and home leads Susie to say I’m homesick. Not so, but my cockles were warmed by the thoughts of home that all this recalls. We’re past the halfway point of our sojourn down under and looking forward to our return. In the immediate future, though, we’re really looking forward to having three of our combined 12 kids come visit us – Mandi and Paul Venable and Jeff Easterling

In Q’town you can bungee drop from high bridges, parapent off a mountain (jump off a mountain in tandem with a guide, pull the chord, then parachute down to the city – as seen here), para-sail behind a boat, shoot rapids, heli-ski in season, propel yourself in an Evel Knievel-type rocket dangling from a cable over a chasm, etc. We didn’t do any of those, but we did ride a jet-boat (again) up the Shotover River and take a gondola up the mountain that overlooks Q’town. I also took a luge ride (wheeled sled version) in a track near the top of the gondola that was a lot of fun. We also drove to the upper end of the lake where this next picture was taken. Milford Sound is over the snow-covered range in the background.

We spent two nights in Q’town, then headed up and over the mountains for the west coast, site of two glaciers. On the way we took a shortcut over a newly “sealed” (paved) steep and winding road that we were told is the highest road in the southern hemisphere – just over 3600 ft.! Seems strange to be seeing terrain at 3600 ft. that is similar to ours at 10,000. (Susie says:

People had prepared us for this really scary drive---so we prepared ourselves and kept hunting for this really scary drive. There were some steep winding spots, but those who warned us had obviously not driven some of the passes in Colorado. Of course, I wasn’t driving, but I think Rob would agree that it was beautiful but not scary.)

Cheers.

Rob and Susie

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