Early this morning we said goodbye to Wellington, caught the bus to the airport, and boarded a plane for the South Island. While in the airport we ran into a few lifesize emissaries from Weta Workshops, who must have been there to see us off.

Coming in for a landing at Queenstown, we could sense a difference in the landscape — while the New Zealand we have seen so far is rugged and gorgeous, what we have seen so far of the south is built on a different scale. Huge mountains and rambling blue lakes that seem to go on and on. Wow!

We had time to go for a walk after checking in at our hotel, and found a nice footpath around the edge of a point that has been turned into a park. Beautiful scenery isn’t equally distributed around the world, and Queenstown certainly got more than the usual share. There are mountains in basically every direction, and lake in nearly as many. The weather is just about perfect. No wonder the place attracts so many outdoor enthusiasts. It feels comparable to some Colorado outdoor adventure towns, only with a lot more water. Near the end of our walk, we passed a hockey rink, which seems to support a local team as well as various amateur leagues.

We only had a short time for our walk before we were due at the orientation meeting for the five-day hiking trip to Milford Sound that begins tomorrow. There will be 48 of us on the journey, and the organizers want to make sure that we’re all properly outfitted and prepared. Unfortunately, we won’t have any cell connectivity while we’re on it, so these blog updates will be on hold until we get back. Never fear, we promise to return with lots of photos and stories to share!

Following the orientation meeting we still had quite a bit of daylight left, so we decided to get some altitude and see how that improved the view. There’s a gondola that carries riders to one of the heights above town, and also a hiking trail. Guess which one we chose? Besides the gondola, our trail crossed paths several times with a mountain biking route, and also shared the slope with an overhead zipline. So the soundtrack for our walk was the whoops of the riders and the metallic buzz of their trolley hitches.

At the top of the mountain there is a whole complex of outdoor sporting activities centered around the gondola station. From bungee jumping to mountain luge (not the icy kind; this is a much tamer activity involving wheeled coasters on a sloping concrete track), there were many diversions available. In fact, the whole of Queenstown seems to be focused on offering as many outdoor-focused adrenaline boosts as possible. If you want to bungee jump, paraglide, jet boat, or anything else to get your heart pounding, Queenstown is your place. Our planned hiking trek seems rather quaint by comparison. In any case, the view from the deck at the gondola port was pretty incredible, and unlike all the other things on offer, it was free.

For the fun of it (and to save time), we decided to ride the gondola on the trip down. The gondola has had several upgrades over the years. From the red two-person red pods of the early years, to larger four person cars later on, it has recently been upgraded to the spacious 10-person cabins that we rode down in.

We had dinner at Madame Woo’s, which was recommended by both our guidebooks. The food was delicious and the setting, at outdoor tables just off the town square, placed us squarely in the goings-on of this bustling adventure city.

Now we’re off to pack for our hiking trek – see you in 5 days!