Queenstown Extreme

Queenstown in the southern part of the South Island is known for its extreme sports.  It is a beautiful town situated on a turquoise blue lake surrounded by mountains! Our group of 12 are hardy souls and most were looking forward to spending our free day in Qtown doing extreme sports!  Ana, from Israel, went canyoning (jumping, sliding, swimming, rappelling, and ziplining through some of the most spectacular natural canyons); Paul and Greg, from DC went ziplining, then mountain biking down steep slope; Rachel from New York went sky-diving for the first time; Brian from Canada went white water rafting.
What did Bill and Robin do?  We had our own challenge...eating the humongous Fergburger.  
 
It is so famous in town that the line begins forming as soon as they open and goes on throughout the day.   It was delicious for sure and as you can see, quite huge.  Bill and I shared one :)

Actually, we did do some other fun things. The night we arrived, we took a 100 year old steamboat out onto the river.  The TSS Earnslaw is very authentic complete with strapping young men putting coal into the 500 hp steam engines.

The trip takes us to a homestead where we have a delicious dinner (lamb and beef of course) and then take in a sheep show.  The dinner is followed by a sheep shearing exhition which is a riot.  First we see how the sheep are herded by....sheep dogs!

Then we go into the shearing area and watch this funny guy shear a huge sheep (as large as he is) in about 2 minutes.  The sheep doesn't mind at all, in fact it is almost like they look forward to being manhandled and sheared.

Sheep shearing

It was a fun show in a beautiful setting. 

We also took a gondola ride up to the top of a mountain and rode a luge down.  Here are some photos from that extreme sport!