Queenstown Days and Nights

Ah, Queenstown. Today's Day 6 of my stay in this city, and boy oh boy. I will say it's set in probably the most visually stunning scenery I've ever been amongst, and the daytime activities I have partaken in - canyon swinging, rafting, scaling snowy peaks - have been excellent and worth the visit. I would definitely recommend swinging by if you are ever in New Zealand, even if you don't partake in the high-adrenaline, high-priced, high-altitude activities - it's just a gorgeous place, and the town is a compactly laid out place with loads of excellent places to eat and cheap things to do (if you look hard enough). Lots of Lord of the Rings scenes to be found in the area too, if you're into that (and I am, by Gandalf's beard!) But, enough about Queenstown in the daytime!

Queenstown at night is everything I hate about alcohol and what it does to people. I've detested Jagermeister since two shots of it destroyed me for an entire weekend junior year of college, and the drink of choice in Queenstown seems to be the Jagerbomb. The bars are meat markets filled with drunk dudes who will bump into you, spilling your drink unapologetically, drunk girls making scenes with poles involved. Every bar seems to be like this. Now, I'm OK with going to a bar like this once in awhile, but it sorta gets old after 20 minutes, and isn't enjoyable to me when sober. As my wise friend J. Pollack once eloquently described Doc Hollidays' in the East Village, "It's a place you end up, not a place you go to." I'd say the same for pretty much every bar I've encountered here. The annoying thing is that even when you resolve to personally boycott the bar scene and just read or watch TV in the hostel, some representatives from a bar or pub crawl organization having special deals that night will come into the hostel lounge and give you the hard sell. Nuts to all of that!

So yeah, I've had some good times here, and some good reminders that I'm not 18 years old anymore and may not enjoy hanging out with 18 year olds, but I'll be ready to get out in approximately 36 hours. I'll consider it a cautionary tale against booking a stay somewhere on the rest of my trip for more than a few days...

My next two stops - Glenorchy, about 45 minutes west of Queenstown, where I'll be doing a couple of day hikes and a LOTR-themed horse trek (overcoming my irrational fear of horses in the process), and Te Anau, from where I'll be doing a fjord cruise and my 4-day hike to Milford Sound (yet another fjord). After that, on April 26th, I'll be heading up the West Coast of the south island, and bouncing around the south island and north island a bit until I meet Tadhog in Wellington exactly one month later on May 26th.