Part 4: Queenstown: The Place for Adventures/Excitement, If You Have the Money

Waking up on Lake Wakatipu in Kingston, we headed along the lake's coast to Queenstown, A small town of 8,000 which is popularly known as the "Extreme Sport Capital of the World". The town is close to one of New Zealand's premier ski slope, The Remarkables. As a result, the town is naturally a small high-end touristy ski town. Within beautiful mountain ranges and right on the Lake, It's the perfect location for just about every extreme sport an outdoor junkie could think of. In fact, bungee jumping was first started in this very town.


So I HAD to do it!

The Kawarau bridge is the original location of bungee-jumping, at 43 meters. How is bungee jumping? Although it was higher up than most cliffs I've jumped before, it seemed more relaxing. You are attached to a bunch of rubber bands, which don't jerk you around like i thought would happen. I find cliff jumping more of a thrill, probably because you are going to hit the water, unless the laws of physics decides to change suddenly. It's also cheaper to go cliff jumping, 150 USD cheaper!

On a side note, that river is where they filmed the Anduin River in end of the Fellowship of the Ring. And yes, that is the natural color of that river. Some of the most beautiful blues run through the countryside as rivers from snow-capped mountains or glaciers in the area.

And what do adrenaline junkies eat after a long day of extreme sports? They eat at Fergberger.

And you thought the "baconator" from Wendy's was bad. I give you, The Big Al's HamburgerDouble patties of beef (1/2 pound), lashings of bacon, a whole lotta cheese, two eggs, beetroot, lettuce, tomato, red onion, a big wad of aoili, avocado, and pineapple.

And I demolished it. After 1 week traveling in the van with only vegetarian meals, i needed my fill for meat. So I got it, and was good for another week of vegetarian meals again.

Being stuck between a couple of mountain ranges on the west coast of New Zealand, the majority of our days in Queenstown were cold and wet. But there is a cure for walking around in the rain, and that is head toward the nearest bar. And whats better than going to one bar a night in Queenstown? Going to Six bars in Queenstown in a night! It was an interesting experience joining the locals in a "Kiwi Crawl".
I ended the night tearing up the dance floor for about three hours before retiring to bed. Quite an interesting dj, at one point he was scratching the theme song to Lion King with some pretty cool beats

Queenstown was a great half-way point of our journey, where we made contact with civilization and took showers(!) along with some great food, good dancing, some extreme sports. We were done with this high-end touristy place, and proceeded to meet more beautiful territory. Next, to Wanaka!

Part Tres: The Road to Queenstown; and a Tangent of Mine

So we left the Catlins in the dust! We shortly arrived in Invercargill, where one of my heroes became a legend in the motorcycle community. Burt Munro! A short recap, Burt Munro was a Kiwi who lived in basically a cinder block shack where he spend all of his money trying to beat the motorcycle land speed record on many old bikes, primarily a 1921 Indian Scout. And he did it! His methods were, flaky one could say, but what this man accomplished from pure dedication has inspired many.

Driving around Invercargill it was funny imagining the people ridiculing this old man for tinkering around with these old motorcycles and racing on the beach against young folks to prove them wrong on their "new" motorbikes back in the 60's. I didn't go out searching for the Munro Special because I knew Ivana and Sophie would have been bored out of their mind. I had already bored them enough with motorcycle conversations. I'll go back in the summer on my bike to check it out.

Invercargill to myself was rather bland. I got a haircut for 10$! The barber said Invercargill is known for its partying at night, but I couldn't really see it. Including my haircut and shopping, we were out of Invercargill in less than two hours. We weren't here for buildings! We wanted to see mountains!
Bilbo: "I want to see mountains again, mountains Gandalf!"

So that's where we headed.


We stopped by Riverton's beach and had a nice lunch. Almost every beach we drove past or stopped by was remarkable in it's own way. I'm not much of a beach person back in the States but here, I could stay out on the beach all day. When it warms up I hope to sleep in a tent on the sand. Hopefully I'll get better at surfing then also. Attaching a surfboard to my motorcycle would be quite tricky. Collapsible snowboards? Turns out they have them! Gotta love Google.

More beautiful scenery came our way as we drove along the border of the Fiordland National Park. The Fiordland is the world's 3rd largest national park, filled with mountains, lakes and sounds going out the the sea. When I get adventurous I'll try heading out deeper into the park. The problem with driving in such a beautiful landscape, is that you really want to stop and enjoy every new beautiful view. But if this was the case we would be stopping every mile. We stopped quite often, about every 25-50 miles. My recommendation to fully enjoy the views would be on a motorcycle or bicycle where you are on your own time. The van was great to see New Zealand as a whole, and to know where to come back to.

Next Stop: Lake Manapouri! This beautiful lake was almost destroyed a few years ago when power companies wanted to create a hydro plant by adding a dam. Thanks to a huge battle by locals and environmentalists, the battle was won and the lake saved! You don't hear a happy ending like that often.
A short travel to Lake Te Anau, we realized finding somewhere to sleep would be hard to find. We knew Queenstown wasn't too far away, and so with no specific plans for this region, we moved onward!

We stopped at a little town called Kingston on the edge of Lake Wakatipu. Not like Kingston from back home! We parked our van parallel to the coast and had a phenomenal view of the lake and it's surroundings.


Yes, that's what I woke up to. I'm living the dream I always had of coming to New Zealand and seeing spectacular sights that even the best of these photographs can capture. Now that I've been to my dream vacation, what's next? Money first, being that it'll be gone by the time I get back. But after that!? I don't know. I'm starting to learn my favorite modes of traveling, which is being with some great people, having a loose plan and going with the flow. Megan Conroy once told me these types of people are "orbs" you can just tell their with whats really going on, and know how to experience life, have fun, go on an adventure.

Where to go? Mainly staying away from civilization, enjoying Mother Nature's creations and enjoying the simpler things of life. Most of all, to just slow down. New Zealand as a whole has a lower standard of living than the states, but they sure do know how to enjoy life. Your probably saying, well they live in a beautiful world down there. Yes, but in a different way. I find New York and the rest of the states as a beautiful place in different ways New Zealand can't match up to. It's just people are too wrapped up in society's demands. You'll probably find me up at Lew Beach (Located in the heart of the Catskills in New York State) when I get back, where things just move slower, the country-side is as beautiful as New Zealand, and where you can watch your family and friends let loose.
















And that's my homage to Lew Beach!

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Cool Photo

On Brighton Beach outside of Dunedin I played around with the lighting of the moon, stars and light pollution while relaxing on the Beach around 10-11pm. 15-seconds exposure, 10 second timer so I could get into position. My camera is a Canon Powershot SD950, a 12.1 mega pixel hand held camera. I love this camera! I just wish it had a better telephoto lens. This is about as typical shot of Luke Stover as it gets, I have my Wurtsboro airport cap on and my leather jacket on. The cherry on top would've been my Fox racing sweater, but that was sadly in too poor shape to bring



Macro is great too! This a common symbol of New Zealand known as the Koru, based off the silver fern frond symbolizing new life, growth, strength and peace.It is an integral symbol in Māori art. The circular shape of the koru helps to convey the idea of perpetual movement while the inner coil suggests a return to the point of origin. Thank you Wikipedia!



-"Lukey" Stover We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot