Last week we headed down to the southern part of New Zealand’s south island for a week of hiking. The “highways” are all what we’d term state route roads, windy two-lane jobbers with hairpin turns, passing through the occasional small town and plenty of farm country, including the bastion of Merino Sheep stations and Icebreaker’s source of wool. Down on the low lands we see various other sheep breeds for meat and coarse fibered wool, but apparently the drier high lands are home to the Merinos because they don’t get foot rot up there….it certainly looks quite dry and brown on these hills!

Look at this cool cat! Milo actually did super on the long car ride to Queenstown, 6 hours from Christchurch. Only one throw-up, and I finally mastered the technique of catching it in a cloth diaper to keep it mostly out of the car seat. We all learned our Raffi songs and listened to Rumpole stories when Milo napped.

Queenstown is the adventure sport capital of New Zealand, where the commercial bungy jump was invented. We stopped in to watch the adrenaline-addicted junkies dive off this bridge, but we didn’t indulge ourselves.

Here’s the womens’ toilet sign at the bungy lookout….and we actually did see one woman jump with a skirt on (over leggings, thankfully). The dress doesn’t stay that tidy little triangle when you jump! And the bungy is handicap accessible–or so I suppose, since the handicap bathroom sign had the wheel-chair figure hanging by a bungy as well.

We got to Queenstown in time to take the gondola up to a sporting and look-out complex perched on the mountainside above the town. Milo thought the ride was cool, of course!

The paragliders take off from up here, sailing out over the town and up the valley on windy days. Queenstown is snugged alongside a big deep glacier lake, 50 miles long and almost 1400 feet deep. Makes Lake George seem small in comparison!

Yes, that’s Jeremiah hooked to that paraglider! He splurged and enjoyed an exhilarating ride down the hillside, came back very happy.  I’ll get to go some day….could have been this day if I wasn’t so darn cheap!