JSW Blog: Queenstown August 2012 - Queenstown: Arrival and Skiing 1 of 3

katherine and i visited queenstown, new zealand for our 28th wedding anniversary. we stayed a week and had a great time in this small resort town (pop. about 10k but they say the area has 2-3 million visitors a year). i skied a couple of times at a couple of nearby ski areas ("The Remarkables" and "Coronet Peak") - the snow was nice at the Remarkables but kind of slushy at the lower elevation Coronet.

the food was very good at most places including our hotel. we actually found a decent mexican restaurant (Sombreros) we ate at several times. early in the week, katherine misplaced her rings so we went by the police station to report them lost (she later found them). while we were there we ran into a guy who was picking up his passport after being arrested for attempting to use a friend's pass at Coronet Peak. he's been banned from the NZ snow fields. i have a shot of the article from the local paper below.

we took a bus/boat tour over to Milford Sound. it was a sunny, cloudless day - perfect for the incredible mountain vistas we travelled trough and the cruise on the Sound. (misnamed as it is a fjord and not a sound - that is, it was caused by glaciation and is not an old river bed filled by rising sea level). the yearly rainfall on the east side of the mountain range we passed through to get to the Sound makes the area one of the wettest in the world (6-7m/year - yes, that's meters/year) while the west side is relatively dry - in the rain shadow. we were lucky to get such a perfect day.