The long way round

Those of you who have driven from the glaciers to Queenstown will know that there’s no road that looks even slightly direct. Rather than heading over the mountains there is a long drive around them to get to Queenstown. The scenery was rather middle-earth and I felt I should be wearing a long cloak and talking in poorly formed sentences.

The long drive was nothing compared to trying to find our hotel. The fuel light had come on as we entered town and as we lapped up and down Frankston St we were worried that we would run out of petrol before even finding our bed for the night. We’d found a bit of a bargain on wotif.com given the season and were staying in the nicest hotel of our trip. And the view was unbelievable. It would have been great to see some snow – but alas, the season did not humour us.

Queenstown did humour us with some yummy food, despite the 17% surcharge due to a public holiday. We tried some Bluff Oysters, which have been called the best in the world…and I have to say that they are. They were incredibly pricey, but well worth it.

We hadn’t really quite worked out how we were going to get to Milford Sound, but we knew we wanted to go. And it appeared that a 5hour each way bus ride was the answer. Milford sound was pretty and all, but not entirely worth the effort. The ride in seemed shorter than 5 hours and I was amazed that our bus driver talked non-stop the whole way, twas quite the feat.