Why Queenstown is my favourite spot in New Zealand

Out of all the places we stayed in New Zealand, Queenstown was my absolute favourite. Everything is super expensive here, but I still completely fell in love with the place! Nestled at the edge of the massive Lake Wakatipu with snow-capped mountains all around, including the very remarkable Remarkables, it is picture perfect. The scenery is breathtaking! We spent a week here and were lucky to have sunshine most days. It was just lovely!

There is SO much to do here, it’s impossible to be bored. The incredible surroundings mean there are hundreds of walking and cycling trails, and there are hundreds of activities from various ways of splashing around in the lake, to zooming around above the town, to heading out of town for wine tasting. The town feels both like a seaside town and a ski resort so has a lovely happy feel to it. I can definitely see why so many backpackers base themselves here, it would be a lush place to live!

We had a mixture of adrenaline fuelled days as well as relaxing days around the lake doing not much. The latter were very much needed to get over the more intense days, and to give our bank cards a rest!

These were my highlights:

Skydiving

This was the best thing I’ve done in New Zealand. And possibly my whole life haha! It was a last-minute decision – we literally discussed, decided and booked it the day before we did it.

Neither of us had done it before and I was really quite terrified beforehand. But all of the Nzone staff, especially my tandem master, Jake, were super chilled and helped to put me at ease. As much as possible when you’re hanging out of a plane 12,000ft above the ground anyway ha!

I can’t lie, the first five to ten seconds of the jump were bloody terrifying! Headfirst, turning around in the air above the lake – all I could see was blue! But then we were on our bellies at terminal velocity and soaring above the most sensational view. There really can’t be many more beautiful places in the world to do it, and it was the most surreal and amazing feeling! It didn’t feel like falling – more just like flying! Once freefall was over we drifted down in the parachute, which was actually the time I screamed the most ha! Saying that, I don’t actually remember if I screamed on the way out of the plane. I know that George did, which gave me such a horrible jolt of fear as he went just before me. Thanks George! Haha. Anyway, Jake had a bit of fun swerving us around with the parachute while I screamed my head off. So fun though! I loved every minute and was buzzing for days afterwards. I wanted to do it again the second we landed! Absolutely amazing. After riding the Shotover Jet Boat earlier that day, it was a pretty exciting Wednesday!

Shotover Jet Boat

We did this on the morning of the day we were doing our skydive, which was a pretty fun way to take my mind off the impending doom! We had a little discount, again thanks to BookMe, which always helps with the enjoyment.

The Shotover River and the jet boat ride cuts up through the narrow Skippers Canyon. It’s an amazingly beautiful area – although at times it’s hard to appreciate it during the jet ride. This is mainly because the driver hurtles towards rocks and cliff-sides and spins you around! It’s SO FUN! We were super lucky to get seats right at the front next to the driver, who I was sure at times was trying to kill us. We got a bit wet and I laughed my head off most of the ride – a lot of the time at George’s screams next to me haha! It’s the only jet boat ride I’ve ever been on, but I have watched others around lakes and harbours, and I can definitely believe Shotover’s branding as the world’s most exciting one!

The Skyline Luge and Gondola

Luging was another new experience for me! A luge is basically a plastic kart with wheels and a brake that you hurtle down a mountain track on. It was so cool!

We felt like little Mario Kart Racers zooming down the tracks! There were two track options, the fast red one and the ‘scenic’ blue run. We took it easy on the blue for the first couple of goes, while we got the hang of turning and braking. But we quickly switched to the red which had a few steep little drops and was much faster. I loved it!

We had seven Luge rides with a big discount, again thanks to our old pal BookMe. As well as being fantastic fun, the luge has the added bonus of having the most spectacular view. You have to take the Skyline Gondola up to the bottom of the track, and then a chair lift to the top of it. The panoramic views of the lake and mountains were just wonderful and made the whole experience all the more amazing!

Frisbee Golf and Fergburgers

When we got to Queenstown we wandered around the gardens and found out about a strange tradition the town has – frisbee golf. This is where you go around a course but instead of golf balls you have a frisbee, and you have to get them into baskets instead of holes! The Queenstown Gardens has a course going around it, which is free to use, so all you pay for is frisbee hire. We got this for $5 each from Peterpans, where you can get it for free if you’ve booked something else with them. So it’s a great activity to do if you’re on a budget! We saved frisbee golf until our last day in Queenstown. The weather was a gorgeously sunny 26 degrees and, having done the Shotover Jet and skydive the day before, a chilled last day in the sun was perfect!

As you can imagine, I was terrible at frisbee golf and George wasn’t much better. But it was quite hilarious watching each other running after our frisbees as they rolled off in the wrong direction towards the lake. I even managed to throw it behind me at one point! There were two locals playing in front of us who had a bag full of different types of frisbees designed for different distances. We were quite amused to see how seriously some take it compared to us idiots! The final score saw George win by 11 points. I thought I’d lost by a lot more than that so we were both pleased ha! 🙂

Frisbee Golf is also a fun way to see the gardens, which are really lovely with the lake on all sides. There’s an indoor ice rink here, which we enjoyed earlier in the week, and you can get good views of Deer Park Heights, which is where they filmed the fight with the orcs during the evacuation to Helms Deep in Lord of the Rings.

After having fun playing frisbee we took part in another Queenstown tradition – stuffing our faces with a Fergburger. These burgers have a big reputation and you see people eating them everywhere. If you get one – call ahead to order and beat the queues. We’d had one earlier in the week but I’d foolishly gone for the pork belly option. This was yummy, but it’s the beef burgers that are the real star of the show at Ferg.

Second time around I went for the beef with bacon and avocado. I didn’t really want to buy into the hype, but I have to concede it probably was the best beef burger I’d ever had ha! It was especially nice eating it while sitting on the lake’s beach in the sun with a few beers. A perfect end to a fantastic week in Queenstown!

Other fun stuff

Thanks again to BookMe, we also had a drink in an ice bar and had a game of mini golf during our week here. It’s also worth driving up to nearby Glenorchy – it’s an amazingly beautiful drive and a gorgeous spot once you get there. If we’d had more money I would have liked to have done one of the many boat trips around the lake, but that will have to be saved for next time. As you can see, though, there really is an abundance of amazing things to do in Queenstown!

There are many trips to the Doubtful and Milford Sounds from here too, but we did it from Te Anau. Read more here!