The weather was going to be iffy midweek, so we hunkered down in Queenstown to ride out the drizzly skies after kayaking Milford Sound. We found some backpacker accommodations Wednesday through Friday to have a little more space to stretch out in than the inside of the Spaceship.

While in town, we had a Fergburger the size of our heads, we tried on all the merino wool clothes that we could find on sale, we hung out in Starbucks updating our blogs, and we started to get very excited about wwoofing in New Zealand and traveling in Africa.

On Friday the clouds parted, so we hiked up to the Skyline complex, an adventure park in the hills surrounding Queenstown. Stephanie had been wanting to go paragliding, but they canceled all their trips due to wind. So instead we did a few rides on the luge, a sort of gravity-powered go-kart—see Stephanie’s post, with video! Then we took the impressively steep gondola back down to town.

By Saturday we were happy to get on the road again. We took a different route back to Wanaka, stopped there for lunch, and continued all the way to the township of Fox Glacier (on the west coast of the South Island), where we planned to spend the next few nights.

Panorama of the Skyline luge and Lake Wakatipu

Lake Hawea reflection on the way to Fox Glacier