Finally we arrived in Queenstown after 12 hours. It took us almost an hour to locate our living place (Pinewood Lodge, 48 Hamilton Road, Queenstown, 9300, New Zealand) hahaha… I forgot to print out the map and chosen the wrong drop off place.
It was a very distant walk. As far as I know, I was made understand that it’s quite near to the town centre but we found out it was so far away! We only realized there’s a shortcut on our last day staying there ;p
Booked Backpacker Twin room which I misunderstood as we had an ensuite but it turned out we had to share with another 4 people for all the facilities -.-” Oh well… What to do? We just had to live with it. At least it’s cleaner than what we had in YMCA. It wasn’t easy to find something for our budget too. Worst, everywhere was fully booked!
After we check-in, we decided to head out. It was already 9pm+ but it was still very bright. We just loiter around and reached our place at 11pm+.
The next morning, we prepared early to go join the Milford Sound tour. Guess what?!! Our bus didn’t show up! We got panic and quickly get the reception to help us contact the company. It turned out that they changed the pickup time to 7.10am instead of 7.40am! We were not informed about it. After several exchanges made in the phone, they finally agreed to arrange the trip for us the next day.
Our plans gone haywired. We were mentally and emotionally tired after that. However, it didn’t deter us to continue with our plan in which the plan for the next day was swapped to this day. That’s not just it, we were worry about our accommodation too since we were supposed to be moving to another accomodation the next day instead of going for a full day tour. We decided to check out our second accommodation in Queenstown and gave us a great heart attack! It was so hard to go there even though it was near to the city centre. We had to go up very steep hill and lots of stairs! -.-” So we decided to look for other accommodation since we were allowed to cancel the booking without charges 24 hours in advance. Too bad… Everywhere was fully booked! We just had to accept the fact that we would have to lug the heavy luggage all the way up by then after our 12-hour Mildford Sound trip. It’s gonna be exhausting!
We then headed to Skyline for the gondola ride. It cost us NZD26 for return ride. Luckily we went early, not many people. We got in fast and got to see a lot without the crowd. Blessings in disguise. I we were to go the next day, we’re pretty sure we would be coming here later in the morning instead of very early in the morning.
Up… Up… We went…
Left: Finally up there…
Right: The gondola for photo taking, it’s 1960’s design.
View from up there.
Camwhored of course!
Another ride to go further up. Not included in the ticket. When you’re up there, there’s quite a number of activities that you can do such as luge ride, mountain biking, bungy jump, helicopter ride, dining, paragliding and so on.
Another views from the top.
Left: Photo taken when we were on it and they photoshopped the backgroud. It’s expensive! We didn’t buy.
Right: When we go down, the queue was sooooo looooong! So many buses too! We met Skyline mascot and took a photo with them.
While were were up there, we got a call from the bus company telling us that they had arranged us on their partner’s bus and there’ll be a taxi come to pick us up from Pinewood. We breathed a sight of relief knowing that we didn’t have to get our luggage all the way up anymore after the trip. There’ll be taxi sending us back to our new accommodation right to the door step with our luggage. Things sure happened for a reason. God does take care of us.