Well the birthday was good. As predicted, the evening was spent in a pub watching the rugby and meeting strangers, not a bad way to spend your birthday really.
Queenstown is as mad as ever. Having seen far more of the south island now, I can appreciate just how busy this town is compared to the rest of the place. You know you're in Queenstown because there are tandem paragliders all over the sky, bi-planes doing aerobatics (with paying passangers of course), bungy jumpers at the top of the hill which over looks the town and jet boats flying around on the lake. I should also tell you about the highest bungy in NZ, which you can watch from the lake side. This might sound more than a bit bonkers, but it's true; the big one is now the parabungy. What happens is that people go out parascending off the back of a speed boat, strapped to an "instructor". When the parachute has reached about 180m, the instructor releases the victim, who then falls towards the lake attached to a bungy rope which is in turn attached to the parachute! It looks completely ridiculous, but is probably great fun - don't think I'm going to try it though. Maybe if I come back to NZ one day! If that doesn't appeal to you, there are loads of other activities. How about river boarding? The idea is that you slip on a wet suit and a climbing helmet and then throw yourself down a river full of serious rapids with nothing more than a body board for help. This place is quite, quite insane.
There's also a bunch of Canadian pro mountain bikers staying on the campsite. They're in NZ for 2 1/2 months making an extreme mountain biking TV program and they look like they're pretty serious mentalists. They were practicing a few stunts around the campsite yesterday on their Santa Cruz Hecklers and V10's (pricey bikes for those not familiar). Seem nice enough and the I reckon the resulting program will be mighty entertaining.
Yesterday was a chilled out day in town, looking through the logistics involved in doing a couple of tramps up at the far end of the lake. My plan is to link two tramps together for another long jaunt through the wildernesses. This time I am going to do the Routeburn walk, which heads over towards Milford Sound and then come back in this direction on the Greenstone track. The Routeburn will be busy, since it is one of the most popular tramps in NZ, but the Greenstone should be quite quiet. The big advantage of walking back in this direction is that the road journey from the far end of the Routeburn back to Queenstown is about 350km, and I have to come back since I can't carry all my stuff and will have to leave some here in storage.
So that should fill up the next five days or so and I will head off tomorrow, giving me one more day in Queenstown before the serious tramping starts again. Just time to rest and pamper my feet and get the supplies in.
Have a lovely week everyone and I'll be back with tramping stories in a few days.
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