A Week in Queenstown, New Zealand

A Family Holiday in Queenstown

Queenstown is one of my most favorite places to Holiday. Queenstown and Hamilton Island are my top two. Vastly different and they both delight my heart to over brimming.
Almost a year ago I planned this trip for a week for our family in Queenstown, New Zealand. I’m a “looker-forward-to-a” so having such a long time to be excited about this trip to Queenstown is an extra bonus. Originally just three of us were going, then our second eldest decided he would join as well. Having him join was the highlight of the trip for Frankie… she was like a magnet to him everywhere we went. She would even position myself and Dan so her brother would have to sit beside her.

We departed Townsville on the 6am flight, fueled quickly with coffee in between the domestic and international airport and waited patiently to board our flight from Brisbane to Queenstown. We were all boarded and there was an issue with the plane that meant we needed to unboard, go through customs again as a special group seeing as though we hadn’t left the country and then spend the night in Brisbane. Bonus was we had Yo Chi for dinner.

Queenstown feels so easy to get to yet feels so tremendously different, as though we have traveled much further. There has never been a place I feel more overwhelmed by God’s creation than New Zealand. It is just majestic. But it also fills my FUN bucket (another reason I love Hamilton Island)! From Luging to ebike riding, incredible animal encounters, exploring and hikes gone wrong (from being very underprepared). None of it is wasted on me. Daily I feel like I don’t want to waste a second and the moments we aren’t “doing” I am watching. Watching the mountains from our accommodation, the light through the trees, the way the clouds are moving, the rainbows, lake Wakatipu and particularly any activity happening on it ( I love the mechanic shark thing that goes under water and then jumps out).

The only difficult thing about Queenstown is the parking…and if you just resign yourself to paying for a parking you will remove some stress. The traffic can also be quite intense, however on our last day we discovered a back way which was wonderful. It may have been slightly longer, but that wasn’t an issue.

This was my third time to Queenstown, I simply do not grow tired of it or even tired of doing some of the same things. Deer Park Heights is top of our list every time, closely followed by Luging and Gibbston Valley E bike hire.

What did we do?

Luging... I feel sorry for anyone else on the track when we go. We are highly competitive and I am incredibly loud. I may have described our family as “Animals”. I give it my all every ride and on the last ride of the day I gained a hole in my jeans and some pretty good bruises. Frankie was delighted that she won that race. That was the first race she won. I always book our tickets online which means we get to jump the queue!

We took the Steamship Earnslaw to Walter Peak farm. We hadn’t ever done it before and it was exceptional even though it was a rainy day. The buffet was superb. We would defiantly do this again.

Deer Park Heights…we are probably their biggest fans. Don’t forget to take coins to buy food for the animals. Every time we visit it is different. This year we were patting the pigs when two little piglets who had gotten through the fence eagerly greeted us. I thought my heart was going to burst! We loved those piglets so much we went back a second time to visit them before leaving the park. Feeding the goats is fabulous for an adrenaline rush. You really need an exit plan to get back to your car without a goat joining you!!! I recommend using your husband hold ing the food as your exit plan.

My recommendation would always be to go for a full day e bike hire from Gibbston Valley. We rode along the Kawarau River stopping to pat goats and pick apples along the way. I would get the wobbles up going across the suspension bridges and half way over the bridge I would get off and walk my bike. I can proudly say by the end of the day I was riding across those wobbly bridges! We stopped at Arrowtown for lunch before heading back to Gibbston Valley Winery where we had a glass of their own Pinot Noir and a local cheese platter.

Pak’n’save is fabulous…it’s so much fun (disclaimer-I do consider big grocery stores fun). I stocked up on Cokes and other holiday goodies. Coke was never in our house when the boys were growing up. But it seems it has become my go to for my family to survive the pace of holidays with me. It is my solution to most things…”here have a coke and let’s go”. We bought many bags of Pascall airplane lollies and Skinny almonds before we left. It is a great place to buy food if you have self contained accommodation, which we did.

We stayed at Platinum Villas and had a Lake view. Highly recommend staying there. It isn’t far from the center of Queenstown but does have a bit of a hill (it’s a decent hill) to get back up. We did it the walk once. Quite close (we still drove to it though) is a fabulous Fish and Chip called Chur Fish and Chips You can order online to avoid a long wait.

Ferg Bakery has the most wonderful breakfast crossiants to start your day, from memory it had ham, scrabbled eggs, spinach and cheese. Absolutely deliciousness!

We made a trip to Glenorchy and on to Paradise. I desparatley want to go all the way to the end of the road, however sensible husband saw how a four wheel drive hardly managed through one of the fords (is that what they are called…the crossings with water and rocks) and said with absolute definity that we were turning around. So we explored a forest like Narnia instead. We laughed so much this day…mostly over nothing that we could even explain, though if we tried to explain that it set us off again.

Bobs cove was a beautiful walk, I can’t imagine how fun it would ben to spend a day there in summer with a picnic.

We feel like we are the only people to have travelled to New Zealand and not managed to see Keas. It is high on Dan’s list so I am always researching where we could go to find them. Early one morning we headed to Moke Lake to see if we could see them. No Keas. But it did rain. This was our first time to Moke Lake and we couldn’t believe we hadn’t been considering it is so close to Queenstown.

My next brilliant idea to see Kea’s was to hike to Ben Lomond. The only distances I really know are from running and where it is generally flat. I way underestimated the hike. We set off late in the afternoon with a can of coke and high hopes (and an umbrella). Two kilometers into the hike and 1 million meters of elevation we realized that Ben Lomond was still far off in the distance and the elevation basically looked like we would be entering heaven. So we had our cokes, laughed and walked back down with big plans to do this again with a little more preparation and a whole lot more of daylight hours.

We absolutely love Ayrburn Winery. We went twice. The first time we left the kids at home (clearly not enough coke in their system) and went to buy takeaway Roast Chickens and sides for us all for lunch back at the Villa. After packing up and checking out of our Villa on our last day we headed back into Queenstown for a quick trip to Mecca and a coffee at Patagonia. We then continued on and spend our reamaing hours at Ayrburn before heading home.

This week in Queenstown has reminded me to 1. Have travel insurance for when circumstances beyond your control change your plans. 2. To be flexible when weather changes your plans. 3. It is worth taking every camera and accessory to capture the story 4. Sometimes the greatest gift of the holiday is a family reset. And that right there is worth everything.

I have loved every single one of our trips to New Zealand, in fairness to our other trips and incredible places we visited and stayed I really must blog the other two. There are places that you MUST not miss…in particular Milford Sound. The purpose of this trip was to stay in one place to make it as simple and relaxing as possible. I am not sure any other member of my family would ever call a holiday with me relaxing…here have a coke.