Gondola rides and skimming stones

I love this photo I captured of Nick from the van skimming stones as we waited in a layby before entering our freedom camping spot. We had a pleasant nights sleep so have decided to return to the same spot tonight but once again over estimated how long it would take us to arrive so we had some time to kill before we could enter the site at 5pm. Perfect time for skimming stones and he's rather good at it. We had to leave the site by 9am this morning so we were up early to get ready to head back to Queenstown. Today we went up Queenstown gondola which takes you pretty high up where you get a good view of the surrounding area. We were hoping to get a single ride up and walk back down but unfortunately they only sell single way tickets from the top, not the bottom so we ended up buying a two way ticket. The track running along side it was incredibly steep and I really wasn't feeling like doing such a big climb. It was a little windy out so this made the carriage sway a little but the view at the top was definitely worth it. The mountain range surrounding the lake provides such a wonderful backdrop for the town and area. We spent time just admiring the view from above before exploring the complex. I managed to buy the last of Nick's birthday presents from the gift shop so that's a relief that it's sorted now. From the centre you can walk up the mountain called Ben Lomond so we started the walk up which initially was rather steep. A thick layer of cloud was descending so we asked a passerby if they knew how long the walk takes and discovered it can take up to 8 hours. We then figured that with such heavy cloud and it being quite late in the day it wasn't a good idea to attempt the climb so instead we did the loop track around the centre and headed back for a much needed crepe. Even though we had bought return tickets for the gondola we decided to walk down as we had planned originally. It was quite an interesting and dangerous walk because we discovered many people head up the gondola with mountain bikes and then race down the steep tracks to the bottom. Luckily the walking and biking tracks were mostly separate but there were times when the two crossed and we had to dash across between bikes coming. It was rather scary to watch them go so fast down such steep slopes and swerve and turn at the last split second around corners. You definitely need to be quite experienced to tackle these hills but surprisingly we probably saw around 60 people doing it. The descent was very steep so I'm rather pleased we didn't attempt to climb up as well as down! The forest itself was dense with pine trees which gave off the most amazing smell and littered the floor with hundreds of soft brown pine needles. Eventually we made it to the bottom and after one last dart across the biking track we were back at the gondola centre. We spent the rest of our day having a walk around the shops and in Starbucks using the free Wi-Fi. I'm so glad that we do have data on my phone when we have signal because if we only had Wi-Fi to rely on I'd hate to think how much we'd spend on Starbucks drinks!Read more