Queenstown and the Southern Alps

Queenstown and the Southern Alps Travel Guide

Set on the edge of the glacial Lake Wakatipu, with stunning views of the sawtooth peaks of the Remarkables mountain range, Queenstown is the most popular tourist stop in the South Island. Once prized by the Maori as a source of greenstone, the town boomed when gold was discovered in the Shotover River during the 1860s; the Shotover quickly became famous as "the richest river in the world." Queenstown could easily have become a ghost town when gold gave out in the early 1900s -- except for its location.

With ready access to mountains, lakes, and rivers, the town has become the adventure capital of New Zealand. Its shop windows are crammed with skis, Polartec, Asolo walking boots, and Marin mountain bikes. Along Shotover Street, travel agents tout white-water rafting, jet-boating, caving, trekking, heli-skiing, parachuting, and parapenting (rappelling). New Zealanders' penchant for bizarre adventure sports reaches a climax in Queenstown, and it was here that the sport of leaping off a bridge with a giant rubber band wrapped around the ankles -- bungy jumping -- took root as a commercial enterprise.

As the kea flies, it's only 130 km (80 mi) from the eastern shores of South Island to its highest peak, 12,283-foot Aoraki (Mt. Cook). As many as 60 glaciers are locked in the Southern Alps, slowly grinding their way down to lower altitudes, where they melt into running rivers of uncanny blue-green hues. Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Area, and the alpine region around it contains the Tasman Glacier, New Zealand's longest.

Much of the region was used in shooting the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and floods of tourists have since come to see the otherworldly landscape for themselves. Trekking is one of the things that the Southern Alps region does best. The southwest corner of the island, where glaciers over millennia have cut the Alps into stone walls dropping sheer into fjords, is laced with walking tracks that take you into the heart of wild Fiordland National Park. The Milford Track is the best known -- it has been called the finest walk in the world since a headline to that effect appeared in the London Spectator in 1908. If you're not keen on walking all the way to the Milford Sound, drive in and hop on a boat and take in the sights and sounds from on deck.

Photo: Blanket Bay/Tourism New Zealand