Sabbatical Travels: Queenstown, NZ: Feels a Bit Like a Real Estate Bust

Queenstown is a bustling ski town in the winter and bustling extreme sports mecca in the summer. In fact, after the peace and near total solitude of Te Anau and Fiordland, it was a bit of a shock to arrive in a town that might remind most Americans of Vail or Killington.

Laura's take on Queenstown is that it's a place of astonishing beauty...

...but it's moving toward the tacky:

However, if you're into getting an adrenaline rush, Queenstown is the place for you: it's the locus of a range of extreme sports we never imagined existed. Every adventure sport known to man is here.

Of course we knew about skydiving and bungy jumping, and there are countless opportunities nearby to experience the unique terror (and nausea) that comes from several seconds of free fall. Laura briefly considered bungy jumping, but for me it was never a question. I'm trying to cut back on moments of terror.

Despite our aversion to extreme sports, Queenstown is still a beautiful place, and it is quite convenient to many of the fruit-growing and wine-making communities in the Central Otago Region, towns such as Bannockburn, Comstock, and Alexandra. Plus, I was starting to feel a bit under the weather, thanks to that woman with the tubercular cough sitting next to me on our flight. We decided to extend our stay to two nights. It was time to rest up.

There are plenty of great restaurants and bars here. We'll cite one excellent Indian restaurant in town, Bombay Palace, which had reasonable prices, excellent vindaloo and spectacular garlic naan. Oh, and when they say "hot" they really mean it.

A few observations on the real estate market. Queenstown was compelling evidence that New Zealand was feeling the after-effects of their own real estate bubble (as we were to find out later after talking with some locals in Wellington, things actually got much more out of control in New Zealand than in most places in the USA). While we were strolling around town, we saw several prime storefront locations sitting empty, plenty of vacancy signs (despite this being high summer season), and for sale signs seemingly everywhere.

But what's bad for the real estate market can be great for tourists: we had plenty of options for accommodations and plenty of restaurants who were quite happy to see us.

A few scenes from Queenstown's wharf:

We saw a didgeridoo player on the wharf--I never knew that these instruments required circular breathing techniques. This guy inhaled through his nose while he blew air out his mouth, so he was able to hold a tone constantly and basically indefinitely.