Today we woke up in the morning and headed to Queenstown to do some sightseeing. Luckily, we found a bike path right along the edge of the lake that we could take right into the city centre instead of riding on the busy road. From the trail, we had some very nice views of the Remarkables.

We had heard a lot of negative opinions of Queenstown, but it didn’t seem too bad to us. We expected to see a lot of hyperactive 20-somethings carrying around cases of Mountain Dew and B.A.S.E. jumping off of street lights, but it was just a small touristy town with a lot of adrenaline activities near by. We can see why it is such a popular place, the scenery around the town is amazing. From some neighborhoods it looks like the Remarkables are right on top of you.

We headed South out of town around noon and were instantly greeted by a strong southerly wind. As we were struggling to reach 10km per hour on flat ground, we realized it was going to be a long day. Then to add insult to injury, I got my first flat tire of the trip! Time to spend a little quality time with my friend the pump.

After a quick patch, we spent the next four hours riding along Lake Wakatipu with views of the lake and nearby mountains.

The wind never let up and at the end of the day we had average only 12.9kph. One of our slowest days ever! We decided to call it a day after only 50km in Kingston at the South end of the lake. Sarah asked a local old-timer if it was always this windy around here and he said yes, but the wind usually blows the other way. Hopefully we’ll have better luck tomorrow!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 10th, 2007 at 5:00 pm and is filed under New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.