Love at First Sight

January 30

Today we arrived in Queenstown, New Zealand located on the south island. I love it here. It has a really fun vibe about it. It has a lot of young adults, shops, cafes and beach areas by the lake. There is so much to do and it is so beautiful you can't help but fall in love. 

We are staying in a very…interesting hostel. Its called X Base. It’s a little on the scandalous side. It has graffiti style art of women all over it. Scandalous? I say yes. I’ve decided this can be added onto my list of out of the ordinary experiences here in New Zealand. There is a large variety of people that are staying here. The people range from tattoos, to dreads, to gages, to ordinary. Because this hostel is geared towards the youth it has a bar/club attached to it (the drinking age is 18 so a bar is a hot commodity).  They have a lot of different activities that happen every night.

We arrived early in the morning so we had time to wander around this very touristy city before we could check into our hostel. We walked to the lake, which is one of the only lakes in the world that has a tide, went into some shops and enjoyed the sun.

After we explored the city a little we had reservations for a shotover jet! Holy cow that was thee most fun thing I think we have done this entire time in New Zealand so far. The jets can run in water that is only 4 inches deep! How crazy is that? These jets turn and twist (literally, they can do a complete 360) in ridiculously tight spaces. We took so many sharp turns right next to huge points in the mountains. We got so close to the rocks that we all ducked because we thought we were going to hit our heads. It was incredibly exhilarating.

Afterwards we went to Arrowtown. Arrowtown is a little suburb on the outside of Queenstown. Its such a cute place. It reminds me of a beach version of Park City.  There are lots of little shops and delicious ice cream. (Okay everywhere in New Zealand has delicious ice cream but it was yummy.) There is also a little trail that you take down by a river that was really pretty and peaceful. It is famous because some of the scenes in Lord of the Rings took place there. It was pretty neat.